Spanish parties neck-and-neck after close local vote

Madrid - Spain's ruling socialists and opposition conservatives are locked in a neck-and-neck battle for support after a close result in local elections seen as a key test one year from legislative polls.

The conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) finished one per centage point ahead of the Socialists, but the ruling party saw its core support hold firm in Sunday's contest.

The final results gave the PP 35.60 per cent to 34.90 for the Socialists.

Both parties claimed victory, with the socialists winning a slightly greater number of councillors although they gained around 150,000 votes fewer nationwide. Since 1983 the party that has won the most votes in municipal polls has gone on to win general elections.

Spanish media said the result was a warning for the Socialists, however, as the country gears up for a general election.

The socialists took over the government after a crushing victory in 2004, just a few days after train bombings in Madrid in which 191 people died.

"The municipals can be considered as a macro-poll indicating the views of the electorate," the left-leaning daily El Pais noted.

"The leaders (of the socialists) should study what went wrong with their policies," it added.

Liberal daily El Mundo was more blunt, writing: "This can be taken as the first defeat of the socialists since (Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez) Zapatero was appointed leader in July 2000."

The socialists' support held up in a broad central swathe of the country but what made the difference for the PP was a big win in the capital, Madrid.

The mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, and the head of the regional council, Esperanza Aguirre, have emerged as serious rivals to Rajoy in case the party loses next year.

Gallardon, the 48-year-old head of the PP's centrist faction, won the capital's main job with 55 per cent of the vote.

He has made a point of distancing himself from the party's Catholic wing and last year officiated over a marriage for gays, which the PP officially opposes.

Opinion polls have consistently named Gallardon as one of Spain's most popular politicians, well ahead of Prime Minister Zapatero.

The conservative daily ABC said Zapatero had failed in his main objective, which was to isolate the Popular Party and to neutralise the threat in next year's general election from its leader Mariano Rajoy.

And Rajoy made no secret of where he stood Sunday. "We are Spain's number one party. We won the municipal elections," he declared.

Socialist secretary general Jose Blanco said his party had seen more councillors elected on a day that elections were also held in 13 of 17 autonomous regions.

With a turnout of 64 per cent, three per centage points down on 2003, Blanco conceded that the PP obtained "the tiniest advantage in votes cast."

The polls came amid unrest in the Basque region and Rajoy has constantly slammed what he termed the government's soft line on armed Basque separatist group ETA, a charge Zapatero rejected.

But there was one major blow for the PP as they lost overall control in the region of Navarra, adjoining the troubled Basque country. There, the moderate nationalist coalition Nafarroa Bai topped the vote.

In the Basque country itself, low-level violence had marred the run-up to the vote with pro-independence voters angered by the exclusion of lists deemed linked to ETA's banned political wing Batasuna.

ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths during its four-decade campaign to achieve independence for Basque regions.

Agence France Presse