Madrid: Spain's ruling Socialists are bracing for stinging losses in regional and municipal voting this weekend as people vent anger over staggering unemployment and bleak economic prospects, launching a drumroll towards likely defeat in general elections next year.
Butting noisily into the campaign is a growing protest movement by Spaniards fed up with both main parties and what they call a stagnant political system that favours economic interests over everyday people facing a grim future.
Polls indicate Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's party could suffer on Sunday the humiliation of losing historic Socialist strongholds such as the town halls of Seville and Barcelona and the regional government in Castilla-La Mancha, the Spanish heartland that was the setting for Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Elections like these are supposed to be about building new schools and hospitals and other projects. But deep economic woes — 21.3 per cent unemployment, forecasts for limp economic growth and mountains of debt — have given the voting a higher-altitude twist.
"You'd have to be blind not to see it. People are planning to vote from a national perspective," said Fernando Gonzalez, 58, who has been jobless for two years.
High unemployment
Zapatero has undertaken austerity measures which for now seem to have warded off investor fears that Spain will join Greece, Ireland and now Portugal in requesting an international bailout. But that's no great consolation for Spaniards enduring hard times, particularly young people facing over 40 per cent unemployment.
Antonio Fernandez, leaving a Madrid lottery ticket office after ponying up a few euros to test his luck, said he has voted Socialist in the past but sees the party as finished now that people are so desperate over the economy and jobs.
