By Muriel Pilkington The local voice
It looks as if elections of one kind or another are going to be dominating the headlines for months to come. The Socialists will be holding primaries in September to decide who will run against Madrid premier Esperanza Aguirre and Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon. The Catalan regional elections are slated for November while the local and most regional elections will be held next May.
Meanwhile, the long-suffering general public will be bombarded with the results of opinion polls – which the political parties play down when they're not favourable, but take notice of them when they are.
For example, Sr Zapatero has always said that it's elections that put a government in power, not polls. That has been his stock reply when the main opposition party, the Partido Popular, has pointed out how well it's doing in the polls. However, he now seems to believe the results of an internal party poll which shows that his candidate for the Madrid regional election – Health minister Trinidad Jimenez – is well ahead of her rival Tomas Gomez. Of course, Gomez's backers have called that poll a “dirty manoeuvre”.
Jimenez herself also seems to believe the poll results, but she may be treading on dangerous ground. The polls that Zapatero pooh-poohed in the past all showed that an increasing number of Spaniards don't trust Zapatero and don't want him to run in the next election. It's also common knowledge that Jimenez was the one who pulled Zapatero out of the hat in 2000 and helped him become the party's general secretary. The polls also show that a fair percentage of the people who voted Socialist the last time around say they won't next time, if Zapatero is the candidate. So Jimenez's close link with Zapatero could prove to be her downfall. We'll soon find out.
Just a few weeks back, Junta de Andalucia premier José Antonio Griñán also dismissed polls that showed the Partido Popular winning the next regional election for the first time since Andalucia became autonomous 29 years ago. But as these polls show the gap between himself and the PP's Javier Arenas growing almost on a daily basis – in favour of the latter – he's started to sit up and take notice. That is, he no longer complacently believes that the Socialist Party is a shoo in and will actually have to fight if it wants to win next May's election.
However, Griñan is viewed by many as the hand picked man of former premier Manuel Chaves who had to be whisked off to Madrid early last year in an effort to save the party in Andalucia. Griñán has done little to develop his own political personality and Arenas continues merrily on his seemingly unstoppable way. He even sounds more like a premier than Griñán and is definitely better looking – something that played in his favour with the Andalucian ladies in the last election.
But the biggest nightmare of all is undoubtedly the Catalan regional election. It looks as if the moderate Catalan nationalist party, Convergencia y Union, (CiU), is ready to take back the power it held until the Socialist Party did a deal with two extreme Catalan nationalist parties to end its 23 year rule after the 2003 election. CiU candidate Artur Mas has learned his lesson from the last time around in 2007 when he swore he would not make an alliance with the PP.
Although he won more votes and more seats than the Socialists, they returned to power with the help of their old allies. This time around, Mas has said CiU and PP have more in common, especially on economic policy, but the polls have given him a comfortable lead. He will also be helped by the fact that many Catalans feel the Socialist government in Madrid let them down over the the reforms to the Catalan Statute. A CiU win in Catalonia and a PP win in Andalucia would almost wipe the Socialist Party off the map – it only has a majority in two regions and has to rely on local parties in the other regions where it is in power.
Given his pathetic record so far, Zapatero could go down in history as the man who helped Spain's oldest political party go down the drain. What can you expect from the man whom football fans begged not to attend the World Cup final between Spain and Germany in case he put a hex on the national team.
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