Spanish electorate returns to the right

With 75 per cent of the votes counted last night, the centre-right Popular Party had 187 seats in the 350-seat lower chamber of parliament; it had previously held 154.

Party secretary general Dolores de Cospedal said it was the biggest majority in her party’s history. The Socialists had 109 seats, dropping from 169 in the previous parliament.

The election was fought in the shadow of a 21.5 per cent jobless rate.

Popular Party Spanish opposition leader Mariano Rajoy has said little about what his party would do to fight unemployment, painful austerity measures and piles of debt.

The victory has brought the conservatives back to power after nearly eight years of rule by Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

On social policy, he put a patently liberal stamp on traditionally Catholic Spain by legalising gay marriage and ushering in other northern European-style reforms.

But on economic matters, Mr Zapatero has been widely criticised as first denying, then reacting late and erratically, to Spain’s slice of the global financial crisis and the implosion of a real estate bubble that fuelled growth in Spanish gross domestic product for nearly a decade.

Unlike Italy and Greece, which recently replaced their elected governments with bureaucrats in an attempt to better cope with the euro crisis, Spain has stuck with an elected government.

Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Mr Rajoy’s Socialist opponent, urged his supporters not to let a low turnout reduce his party’s chances.

“The next four years are going to be very important for our future,” he said. “The big decisions that have to be taken must be made by citizens, so it’s important to vote,” he said.

Poor weather caused some polling stations to open late, and a station in the country’s south had to be relocated because of flooding in the area.