SO MANY obituaries had already been written for the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) that its performances in last Sunday’s elections to autonomous parliaments in Andalusia and Asturias seem like a resurrection.
Even a glance, however, at the actual figures show that the PSOE is still in very deep trouble.
It has lost almost a third of its vote since the 2008 autonomous elections in Andalusia, and can only remain in government there with the support of the resurgent United Left (IU).
But Sunday’s sudden and completely unexpected reversal of a seemingly irresistible tide of victories for the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) certainly raises a big warning flag for Spain’s four-month-old government.
Many Spaniards are not willing to swallow the bitter austerity diet that the conservatives have been prescribing since they ousted a discredited PSOE from power in Madrid in last November’s general elections.
“You can’t always get what you hope for,” the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, conceded yesterday as he arrived in Seoul for the summit on nuclear security.
What he had hoped for, and what all the opinion polls had promised him, was a doubly historic breakthrough that would have consolidated his party’s unprecedented control of municipal and regional governments across Spain.
Andalusia would have been an especially sweet prize for the conservatives.
It is the most populous region in Spain and has the second-highest budget (after Catalonia).
It is also a region steeped in the traditions of the Spanish left, famous for its fierce resistance to abuses of power by landlordism and the Catholic church, both still closely associated with the PP.
For Javier Arenas, the PP leader in the region, the failure to grasp this prize is especially bitter.
It is his fourth attempt, and he has behaved throughout the campaign as though he were assured of victory.
Victory is what he was still claiming yesterday, with some support in right-wing Spanish media, on the grounds that he had won a plurality of the votes in the region, for the first time ever.
But his margin in total votes (34,000), and seats (three), over the PSOE’s outgoing first minister, José Antonio Griñán, was slight, and is cancelled out by the rise of the IU on the left.
Indeed, the PP’s 1,567,000 votes is actually 160,000 fewer than the party took in 2008.
Abstention was the real winner on Sunday, with the PSOE vote tumbling from 2,178,000 votes to 1,523,000, a collapse not compensated for by United Left’s rise to 437,000 from 317,000 four years ago.
With 30 per cent unemployment in the region, three times more than at the last election, and much higher percentages among the young, the clearest message is that many Spanish voters are thoroughly disillusioned with the major parties.
With combined seats of 59 over the PP’s 50, the PSOE and IU have a comfortable margin with which to form a coalition government.
But IU will exact a price, forcing Griñán to shift towards the left.
The result should bring some fresh air to the corridors of power in Andalusia, dominated by PSOE governments for an unbroken 30 years.
The final outcome in Asturias is much less predictable, though again the PSOE will be relieved that it has performed better than expected.
A regional split from the PP is likely to determine the final shape of the government there, probably in favour of the conservatives.
The PSOE can take comfort from these elections, insofar as the humiliating prospect of losing one of its last major levers on power has now receded.
However, that relief has to be tempered by the sobering knowledge that it is continuing to haemorrhage votes at an extremely alarming rate for a major party.
As for the PP, it will barely have time to digest the weekend’s setbacks before it faces a general strike against its austerity policies, called by the country’s two major unions, due to take place this Thursday.
Yesterday, Rajoy insisted that the results would not make him waver in applying more of the same, promising a “very austere budget”.
Spain is not Greece, but it looks like it could be heading for a spring of discontent.