By Victor Carriba, Prensa Latina
Madrid : Around 35 million Spaniards will go on Sunday to the polls to choose between the continuation of the current Socialist government or a return to a self-named central-right choice, which for many has already lost its center.
Next Sunday´s will be the 10th elections of the so called democratic period, which started in Spain in 1977, after Franco´s dictatorship.
The first elections were won by the Democratic Center Union, which was reelected in 1979.
Three years later, the victory went to the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Labor Party), headed by Felipe Gonzalez, who was re-elected as government president successively in 1986,1989 and 1993.
Socialists and their leader Gonzalez lost by one point the 1996 election, faced with PP (People’s Party). The result took Jose Maria Aznar to power, where he stayed for a second term of office, after winning in 2000.
In 2004, when everything pointed to another PP victory at the polls, and Aznar was manipulating information about a Madrid terrorist attack -three days before the elections-, all predictions fell apart.
On March 14 of the same year, socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero became the government president and started his mandate with a decision that had great impact on the world: withdrawal of the Spanish troops sent to Iraq by his predecessor.
The PSOE won 42.6 percent of the votes in hose elections, against 37.7 percent of the PP. The PSOE won 164 parliamentary seats and the PP obtained 148, in a 350-seat chamber.
With that correlation of force and without Parliament majority, the head of government promoted and achieved approval of social laws, referred to abortion, sexuality, the women’s role in society, social security, young people, and other issues.
And all that under the pressure of a widening turn to the right by the main opposition party, currently headed by Mariano Rajoy, with Aznar behind the scenes and the Catholic Church as the main ally and virtually involved in the electoral campaign.