MADRID, March 15 (UPI) -- Spain headed toward a new, and dramatically different political era Monday, as its Socialist prime minister-elect pledged to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, even as he vowed to battle terrorism "in all its forms."
In an interview with the Spanish publication Cadena Ser, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said he wanted to form his own government.
Just hours after Zapatero's upset victory of the ruling Popular Party, the country continued to digest the latest shock of a tumultuous week. In Madrid Monday morning, workers hurried to their jobs with one eye on the papers they clutched.
The news was unambiguous.
"Spain punishes the PP and Gives Power to the PSOE!" read El Mundo´s front-page headline, echoing many others.
The country's leading newspaper, El Pais called the Socialist Party's come-from-behind victory "without precedent."
The Socialists captured 164 of the 350 parliamentary seats, or 38 percent of the vote, compared to 148 parliamentary seats, or 38 percent of the vote for the Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
Until the last minute, few pundits were able to predict the political winds. Although the Popular Party held a comfortable lead for weeks in the polls, the political stakes changed dramatically after Thursday's train bombings in Madrid, which killed 200 and wounded more than 1,500.
"The PP has not only lost its absolute majority ... but every option to govern," El Pais wrote in its Monday editorial, attributing the electoral
"volcano" in part to a surge of young voters who went to the polls.
Spanish youth also led demonstrations in major cities across Spain Saturday, to protests the government's handling of the Madrid terrorist attack.
Besides feeling the government was covering information up on the bombings, many Spaniards indirectly blamed the government for the attacks because of its pro-U.S. stance on the war on Iraq.
That sentiment only mounted with evidence increasingly pointing to Islamist extremists, rather than the Basque terrorist group ETA, as being the likely authors of the Madrid bombings.
In an interview on Spanish radio, Zapatero described the Iraq war and postwar occupation as a "disaster." Once in power, he said, he aimed to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops now in Iraq, but only after extensive political consultation.
So far, the government has arrested five suspects in its investigation into Thursday's bombings, including three Moroccans: Jamal Zougam, 30; Mohamed Bekkali, 31; and Mohamed Chaoui, 34.
El Pais reported Monday that Spanish police believe Zougam participated directly in Thursday´s attacks. Officials also link him to the Salafia Jihadia group, blamed for last May's attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, which killed more than 40 people, the newspaper reported.
Handling the current chaotic situation in Spain will be a tall order for 43-year-old Zapatero, an untested leader. He rose fast in politics, becoming Spain´s youngest lawmaker in parliament in 1986. In 2000, he was tapped to lead the Socialist Party, then weak and disorganized.
Even after the Popular Party was widely criticized in Spain for its bungled handling of the Prestige oil tanker spill off Galicia in 2002 - not to mention its support for the deeply unpopular war on Iraq - the Socialists failed to win local and regional elections last May.
Pere Vilanova, a political science professor at the University of Barcelona, believes Zapatero will echo the political line of Spain's former Socialist
prime minister, the charismatic Felipe Gonzalez.
"He´ll go back to the Gonzalez track," Vilanova predicted in an interview. "Loyal European partner. And loyal partner of international institutions - going back to supporting the legitimacy of the United Nations. Going back to dialog with Morocco."
"Foreign policy," he added, "is about a lot more than just the United States."
Steven Everts, a Senior Researcher at the Center for European Reform in London, agrees that under Zapatero, "You´ll see a substantive shift to more Europe and less Washington."
"Among many Spanish Socialists, there's a strong sense that an imbalance has crept into Spanish foreign policy," he said. "That under Aznar, Spain has been too close to Washington."
Indeed, Aznar has prided himself on his close relations to U.S. President George W. Bush, and the three-way meetings between Madrid, Washington and London during the build-up and aftermath of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The Spanish Prime Minister made good his long-term pledge not to run for a third, four-year term. He says he wants to work on a foundation linked to the Popular Party, among other things.
During his tenure in office, Aznar has been criticized as wooden and authoritarian, lacking the common touch among ordinary Spaniards and those he worked with. But he is also credited with halving Spain's abysmal unemployment rate, reviving the economy and whipping his once-divided party into shape.
