Zapatero wint verkiezingen (en)
Spanish socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Sunday won a decisive victory in what was his second general election, increasing his party's vote despite the killing on Friday of a former socialist municipal councillor in the militant-nationalist blighted Basque country.
However, Mr Zapatero did not quite manage to win the absolute majority he had been hoping for. With 99.95 percent of the votes counted, his party now holds onto 169 seats, seven short of the 176 required for an absolute majority.
"The Spanish people have spoken clearly and have decided to open a new period without tension, without confrontation," the socialist leader told cheering supporters in Madrid.
"I will govern for all," said Mr Zapatero while adding "but thinking, before anyone else, of those who don't have it all."
The main opposition party, the right-wing Popular Party (PP), also moderately increased their support, climbing to 153 seats from the 148 it held following the 2004 elections.
Senator Pio Garcia Escudero, the PP's campaign co-ordinator, said: "I congratulate the Socialist Workers' Party [PSOE]. The victory is clear and was won in fair combat."
Main losers
The country's multiple small regional nationalist and far-left parties were the main losers of the evening, seeing their support significantly diminished as results further consolidated what has been a growing bipartisanism between left and right in Spain's political culture.
The United Left, a coalition of former communists and other far-left groups received its worst result since 1982, dropping down to three from its previous five seats. Catalonia's leftists, the Catalan Republican Left, or ERC, lost five of its eight seats.
Analysts have suggested that the far left and irridentist groups have been squeezed by a combination of the socialists' broadly left-wing policies and moves closer to nationalist demands.
Social reforms
Over the past four years, Mr Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq and introduced a swathe of progressive social reforms such as same-sex marriage, making divorces easier to obtain, an amnesty for undocumented workers and a package of gender equality laws - all of which were popular amongst young people and urban voters but which provoked the ire of the hard-right in the country.
The socialist leader promised during the campaign that he would consolidate his progressive agenda, pledging the creation of 2 million new jobs and saying he would increase the minimum wage and extend maternity leave.
The party also intends to focus on climate change actions and the introduction of anti-discrimination legislation.
This was in stark contrast to the rightist campaign of Partido Popular leader Mariano Rajoy, who, avoiding discussion of the social issues he feared would galvanise turnout amongst leftists, focussed his attacks on the question of immigration, hoping to undermine the socialists' support base amongst the working class and poor.
Mr Rajoy also focused on the slowing economy, which had grown at around four percent in the last few years, but is set to stumble along with much of the rest of Europe in the wake of the financial crisis emanating from the United States. The construction sector in Spain has been particularly badly affected.
The PP also targeted their opponents for negotiating with ETA, suggesting they were soft on the Basque militant separatists.