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'Super Zapatero' wins but Rajoy gains too

• Mark Mardell
• 10 Mar 08, 12:01 PM

The ecstatically happy crowd of men and women waving red socialist flags are roaring and shouting, waiting expectantly for their man to appear at the podium in the shape of a big red 鈥淶鈥�.

The noise is so great that I can鈥檛 hear my cue from the TV studios in London and my producer, the multi-talented Sean Klein, adds another skill to his repertoire. He has to sit at my feet and bang my leg when it's time to to talk, like the owner of a performing horse.

'Super Zapatero'

The crowd chants 鈥淪uper Zapatero鈥� and it takes some minutes for the newly re-elected Prime Minister of Spain to quiet them down. When he does, he promises to govern 鈥渇or all of Spain鈥�.

Super Z, with his circumflex eyebrows, may not be the most obvious superhero, but he has performed a stunning feat: when all the opinion polls were predicting he might just squeak home he has actually increased his party鈥檚 number of MPs.

But hang on, what鈥檚 this? Over at the headquarters of , Rajoy is on the platform, cuddling his wife, a big smile on his face.

His supporters may be a little more subdued, but they are cheering and waving their blue flags with enthusiasm.

There鈥檚 not a despondent face in the crowd and a spokesman calls the result 鈥渕agnificent鈥�.

Electoral maths

For the opposition have also increased their share of the vote and number of MPs. How to explain this weird (to British eyes) electoral maths? Well, some of the smaller parties have suddenly got a lot smaller.

No doubt psephologists will be crawling over the results for some time to come.

So here are some initial thoughts about the reasons for the vote. At this stage, this is guesswork and only scientific in the sneeze that these are disprovable theses.

It may be that Spain has voted for a two party system. Many observers have commented that the traditional division - socialist secularists and Catholic conservatives - has got sharper in the last four years.

Perhaps many have seen this as the real choice. Or perhaps, with the economy taking a nose-dive, people think only the bigger parties can provide the answer.

The losers

Who has taken the hit? are the ERC, a left-wing Catalan party which goes down from eight seats to three. That鈥檚 interesting because the CiU - the Catalan conservatives - increase their number of MPs from 10 to 11.

The IU, a pact of greens and communists, go from five seats to two. The Basque PNV lose one seat as do the Canary Islands Cooalition and Aragon nationalists, who no longer have anyone in Parliament. A new party, led by a former socialist concerned about more power for the regions, wins its first seat.

So perhaps left-wingers, at least, have decided that Zapatero is their best hope, and wanted to make sure the conservatives didn鈥檛 take power. It's possible that the government's policy of was enough for some, who are then happy to vote nationally in national elections.

Given that the desire of some Catalans for independence, and the real fears of some Spaniards that their country could be on the verge of flying apart, socialists will argue that their relaxed approach to regional government has paid off.

But Zapatero is still short of a working majority and taking votes from other left-wing parties won鈥檛 make the coming negotiations any easier. Spain is in for another interesting four years.

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