Spaniards voted yesterday after an often-bitter general election campaign dominated by a cooling economy and concerns over immigration and jolted by a last-minute killing by suspected Basque separatists.
Public opinion polls taken before the shooting death suggested a win by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists, although by a margin that would leave them short of an absolute majority in parliament - as is the case now.
The voting was overshadowed by Friday's killing of a former Socialist town councilor by a suspected member of the militant Basque group ETA. The scale of the carnage paled in comparison, but the timing of the attack was reminiscent of an election-eve massacre by Islamic militants who killed 191 people in a string of bombings against commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004.
Zapatero came to power then amid a wave of voter outrage at the ruling conservatives who blamed the attacks on ETA even as evidence of Islamic involvement mounted.
The tactics by the conservatives were widely seen as a bid to deflect perceptions that the attack was al-Qaida's revenge for the government's deeply unpopular support of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
This campaign was dominated by concerns over the Spanish economy.
That was long one of Europe's great success stories, with more than a decade of robust growth, but now it is cooling amid rising unemployment and high inflation and an end to a boom in the construction sector, the strongest engine of growth.
Both main parties also clashed over immigration, with the conservatives saying Zapatero had made Spain a magnet for destitute foreigners in search of a better life, draining resources for things like schools and health care.
The conservative candidate for prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has vowed to make immigrants sign a contract obliging them to respect Spanish customs and learn the language.
Zapatero's party called this position xenophobic.
Rajoy repeatedly accused Zapatero of lying about his dealings with ETA during and after failed peace talks in 2006.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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