The End of the Spanish Empire

An admirer of the way Tony Blair revived Britain's global reach, Aznar followed a similar strategy, allying with the United States in the Iraq war, confronting terror at home and pursuing free-market reforms that helped make Spain the most consistently robust big economy in Europe. Aznar would be driven out of office by his mishandling of the March 11, 2004 attack, opening the door to Zapatero's Socialists. But under Zapatero, Spain's reputation continued to swell. Though he is neither a commanding personality, nor a conviction politician in the way Blair and Aznar were on foreign policy, he likes to describe himself as a democrat who believes fervently in women's rights. He joined the party as a teenager, studied law, and at 22, was named secretary of the Socialists in León. He was the youngest deputy when he was elected to Parliament in 1986, rising slowly to become party leader. As prime minister, he seemed to be moving quickly to put his own stamp on Spain. But his early popularity derived from the fact that he was not the newly reviled Aznar. He distanced himself from Bush and withdrew Spain's troops from Iraq.

Closer to his political heart, he introduced social reforms hailed by the center-left: promoting equal treatment for women in the workplace, legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples and making divorce easier. All the while, fueled by immigrant labor, Spain's traditional economic ties to Latin America, huge numbers of second-home buyers from across Europe and the lasting benefits of having privatized state industries, Spain grew at up to 4 percent a year, well above the European average. Spain was suddenly seen as cool, competitive and compassionate—a Hispanic, sun-drenched Sweden, only with five times the number of people.

Zapatero's approval ratings initially reached nearly 60 percent. Across much of Europe, which shared the Spanish people's antiwar, anti-Bush sentiments, he was seen as a New Left alternative to the pro-interventionist, pro-American Blairite school. But increasingly he became entrenched in internal politics. He become more party leader than leader of his country, putting his energy into sparring with the center-right. On the domestic front, Zapatero made two grave political missteps. His first was to ally his party with the Republican Left of Catalonia, a party that seeks Catalan independence. Right-wing politicians and commentators accused him of promoting the Balkanization of Spain—exploiting a deep-seated national fear that was refueled by Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia last month, which Spain, unlike most of Europe, did not recognize.

Zapatero's second miscalculation came when he decided to open talks with the ETA after the Basque group declared a ceasefire in March 2006. It was a courageous move, at a time when polls showed the country evenly divided over whether to negotiate with terrorists. But daily accusations from the opposition poisoned the atmosphere. When an ETA bomb killed two people at Madrid's airport in December that year, Zapatero was forced to end negotiations. Since then, dissatisfaction has increased; by January this year, Zapatero's approval rating had slipped to just 40 percent.

So far, Rajoy has has been unable to capitalize on his opponent's weaknesses. A longtime PP apparatchik, he is a colorless politician whose singular advantage in becoming party leader was that he was hand-picked by Aznar. His policies are very much in line with the PP mainstream: he sides with the Catholic Church on social issues like same-sex marriage; he proposed a Nicolas Sarkozy-like "contract" to ensure immigrants adopt Spanish customs. But the PP itself has been split and weakened by infighting since its 2004 loss. A defeat on Sunday will heighten calls for a party shakeup.

Meantime, the two parties and their leaders behave "like 17th-century armies where one side shoots, then reloads while the other side shoots," says a political analyst at a Spanish bank—anonymously, because he doesn't want to inject his employer into this partisan brawl. As a consequence, says William Chislett, the author of several books on Spain, "the level of disenchantment with the political system is at an all-time high."

The country seems, if not adrift, becalmed at the moment, even unsure of itself and its identity. It has long been an oddity at sporting events that Spanish athletes stand mute or just hum along as their national anthem is played: "La Marcha Real" (The Royal March) has no lyrics. The Spanish Olympic Committee recently sponsored a competition to put words to the music—30 years after the Francoist lyrics were removed—and Placido Domingo was to sing them at a committee gala in January. But the committee scrapped the idea after it rejected more than 7,000 entries. "The lyrics had to meet two requirements that they did not fulfill," said committee president Alejandro Blanco. "They had to unite people and there had to be consensus." Franco, with his sinister emphasis on fascist-tinged nationalism, gave patriotism a bad name. Many Spaniards find it easier to be Basque or Catalan than to be Spanish— to prize regional identity over national identity. A dispiriting election campaign such as the one now ending doesn't help.

© 2008