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It boils down to voter turnout in Spain

It was with a heavy heart that Spain went to the polls on Sunday. The killing of a former municipal councillor on Friday cast a shadow over the vote, abruptly putting an end to campaigning hours before it was to officially end. Television stations repeatedly played clips of the funeral of Isaias Carrasco who died in the arms of his wife and daughter.

Twenty-year-old Sandra Carrasco in an emotional speech asked her compatriots to vote en masse. “My father was murdered because he defended democracy, freedom and socialist ideals. We must all vote to defend those ideas. Don’t use my father’s assassination to manipulate the vote,” she warned the Conservatives who suggested that the killing took place because the Socialists were soft on the Basque separatist organisation ETA which has been blamed for the murder.

The polling station set up in the Garcia Lorca Cultural Centre in Carabanchel one of Madrid’s poorest and most crowded suburbs was jammed with voters. “At 11.30 on Sunday morning the turnout was as high as 25 per cent. The more people vote, the better it is for the PSOE. We expect a big win for our party and we are hoping to improve our seat count in the Cortes from the current 164 to 170,” said Emilio Alberca, a 42-year-old municipal worker displaying a prominent red Socialist Party (PSOE) badge.

Observers said the killing of a former socialist municipal worker could either brighten or blight the electoral prospects of the Socialist Party where outgoing Prime Minister Jose Luis Roderiguez Zapatero is slugging it out against his main Conservative rival, Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party (PP) in what has been a particularly vituperative and nasty campaign.

Thirty-eight-year-old Alba who works with disabled children is casting her vote for the first time. She comes from Colombia and has only just got her nationality. “I know what political violence is, and it is Saturday’s killing that has brought me out to vote. I want a better future for my daughter, a future without guns and terrorism,” she said.

“You can tell those who voted for the PP and those who are left wing from the kind of clothes they wear,” remarked music teacher Nacho Corral. Seventy-year-old Josefa wore a bright red cardigan to vote. “All my life I have voted left. In this area which is mainly poor and lower middle class there are a lot of illegal immigrants. It is a shame they cannot vote because they contribute greatly to the economy, although the PP does not like to admit it. They have been made the whipping boys in this election,” she said.

Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero appealed for a high turnout as he cast his ballot near his official residence at the Moncloa. “Spain will be stronger if democracy is stronger, and democracy is stronger if all citizens exercise this right that gives us the ability to decide the future of our country,” he said.

Opinion polls indicate Zapatero’s Socialist Party will defeat the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) led by Mariano Rajoy. But a high turnout is considered critical to the Socialists’ chances of success. Some 35 million voters are eligible to cast their ballot for 350 members of the Cortes, the lower house of parliament, as well as 208 of the 264 members of the Senate, or upper house.

At the Socialist Party in headquarters in Calle Ferra, carpenters engaged in last minute banging and hammering to ready the stage for Zapatero’s acceptance speech later in the day. Raffa from the press office could barely contain his excitement. The early figures indicating a high turnout are likely to translate into more votes for the PSOE. “It would be wonderful if we could get an absolute majority then we can push our real programme through,” he said.

For the past four years the PSOE has been dependent on support from two Catalan parties, the powerful CiU and the Republican Party as well as from the United Left, a grouping of small left wing parties including the communists and the Basque PNV.

In Pinto, a small new “village on the outskirts of Madrid, populated mainly by middle class professionals, Maria Carmen del Yermu, better known as Menchu, has been working for the Conservative Popular party for several years. Pinto formerly voted Communist, then became Socialist and in the last election of 2004 put Conservative Jose Maria Aznar into power. “The Left has been very corrupt. The Matro line was built here and a lot of money went missing the people of this neighbourhood no longer trust the PSOE,” she said. But she is worried by the huge turnout. The salmon-coloured ballot paper for the Congress of Deputies lists 32 parties.

“I voted PSOE,” said 33-year old singer Belen Cantos who spent three years studying Carnatic music in Chennai. “The entire debate here has been around immigrants. I cannot understand or condone the PP’s intolerant attitude to foreigners. I have many friends who come from Latin America and the stories they tell me about racism are scary. Having lived in India I can only think of immigration in positive terms. Besides, Rajoy has been saying some dreadful things about artists, calling them lazy people who have to be forced to work. I cannot vote for someone like him. But my own family is divided. My father who owns a petrol pump votes PP. My mother, sensible woman, is for PSOE. Let’s see, they might not talk to each other for a few days after the vote,” she laughs.

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