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Spaniards leading a national surge in global business and politics, culture and the arts. As the country prepares for a pivotal election, TIME examines its striking creative burst
Posted Sunday, Feb. 29, 2004; 15.48GMT
By any measure, Mariano Rajoy has a golden curriculum vitae qualifying him to be Spain’s next Prime Minister. Over the last eight years he has served stints as Minister of Public Administration, of Education and of the Interior, and as Deputy Prime Minister. So why does Spain’s election feel like a vote on the man who’s stepping down, José María Aznar?
Partly, no doubt, because he’s stepping down at all — and in full flower. It’s a rarity to see a politician relinquish power willingly, as Aznar well knows. He won in 1996 because the almost 14 years of Felipe Gonzalez’s Socialist governments ended in a sump of corruption due in part to the debilitating effect of having stayed on too long. Partly, though, Aznar’s dominance of a race he’s not running in stems from the transformative power he wielded over his Popular Party (PP) and his country for the past eight years. He brooked no dissent, whether over his highly unpopular support of the war in Iraq, his authoritarian approach to regionalist demands in Catalonia and the Basque Country, or his unilateral choice — rubber-stamped by the party — of Rajoy, 48, as his successor. Aznar polarized Spain, and, for now, his legacy is what people want to talk about.
Rajoy professes unyielding loyalty to that legacy, but he presents it in a less severe style. “Aznar was always the angry man, not attractive but very efficient,” says Juan Pablo Fusi, academic director of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation in Madrid. In contrast, Rajoy’s colleagues say he has the dry, almost British, sense of humor of his native Galicia. “Unlike Aznar,” says one PP parliamentarian, “he doesn’t turn people off.” Rajoy is essentially promising a continuation of Aznar’s policies: strong ties to the U.S., a hard line on constitutional changes and further liberalization of the economy. “I would like to be able to present a final balance like [Aznar’s],” Rajoy says.
Running against Aznar, therefore, is the best possible course for the Socialist candidate, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, 43. First elected in 1986 as the then youngest member of the Spanish parliament, Zapatero’s accommodating style got him the nod as party leader after the Socialists’ defeat in 2000. He was chosen because the party’s powerful regional barons didn’t want their wings clipped by someone with Aznar’s penchant for control, and he has had occasional trouble asserting discipline over them ever since. “Zapatero’s a nice guy, but he lacks the killer instinct,” says José Antonio Martinez Soler, a former journalist with El País and Spanish state television who now publishes 20 Minutos, a free daily newspaper. “You’d be happy to have him marry your daughter, but maybe not to run your company.” Or, apparently, your country: Zapatero regularly trails Rajoy in the polls.
It doesn’t help Zapatero that his party is in a controversial coalition with the nationalist Republican Left in the Catalonian regional government. The relationship proved embarrassing when it was revealed that a Catalan leader had met secretly with Basque separatist group ETA, which last month suspended its activity in Catalonia.
If — and it’s a big if — he can put that behind him, Zapatero has plans that could draw voters. He has promised to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq on June 30 unless some kind of U.N. authority has been secured by that time. And he has vowed, through better education and research, to counter Spain’s low productivity.
But first, Zapatero must get out the vote. “Last election we had 1.5 million Socialists who abstained; that’s our main problem,” says Rafael Estrella, a prominent Socialist Member of Parliament. It could be a problem again this time round: at the end of last month, opinion surveys predicted that the PP would get 42.5% of the vote, while Zapatero’s PSOE would get 37%.
For whoever wins, though, the hardest challenge may be getting out from under Aznar’s shadow.
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