Spanish PM Rodríguez Zapatero Calls Early Election

Articles:

Wall Street Journal, Spanish Leader Calls Early Election, Jonathan House

El País (Spain), Final de Ciclo, Editorial 7/17/2011

El País (Spain), Rubalcaba: “Tuvimos ocho años para pinchar la burbuja y no lo hicimos”

Rubalcaba and Zapatero
from Iberosphere.com

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, called for early elections on November 20, ahead of scheduled elections in March, 2012.   Spain is suffering from an unemployment rate of over 20%, the highest in the developed world.  Zapatero's socialist PSOE party was handed losses in key regional elections is May.  Left-leaning newspaper, El Pais, has been called for elections "as soon as possible", and said that the leader has not given any reasonable hope for relief to the five million unemployed, and the 300 thousand who have lost their homes in the last 3 years.  They have gone so far as to say that the November date was too late, and that sooner would be better.

Rodriguez Zapatero was elected in March, 2004, just after the terrorist bombing in Madrid commuter trains, which killed 191 people and caused over 2000 injuries, on March 11, 2004.  Zapatero's predecessor, José Maria Áznar, of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) had positioned himself as a leading supporter of George W. Bush, and had sent Spanish troops to Iraq, despite large public opposition in Spain.   When it became clear that the bombs had been set off by al Qaeda (despite early attempts by Áznar to blame Basque separatists), many Spaniards reacted by giving a surprise victory to Zapatero, who had pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.  Shortly after being elected, Zapatero made good on his pledge.  He was re-elected in early 2008, before the real estate sector, and then the economy, crashed.

It is interesting to see that in today´s El País, it is reported that socialist candidate Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said: "We had eight years to pop the bubble, and we didn't do it."  It looks like Spain will have a conservative government by the end of the year.