Conservatives Re-Elected In Spain

Boosted by a robust economy, Spain's ruling Popular Party has scored a landslide win in the country's general election, gaining an absolute majority in Parliament.

Jubilant supporters of the conservative Popular Party, led by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, waved red and yellow Spanish flags in a victory rally outside party
headquarters in Madrid.

The Interior Ministry says with 93 percent of the votes tallied, the Popular Party won 44 percent. That gives it 183 seats in the 350-member Congress of Deputies, up from 156 in the last legislature.

The opposition Socialists won 34 percent and dropped to 125 seats from 141. Its allies in the communist-dominated United Left coalition slumped to eight seats from 21.

The defeated Socialist candidate for prime minister said he was resigning immediately as head of the party.

"From this moment, I present my irrevocable resignation as secretary-general of the Socialist Party," Joaquin Almunia told a news conference, moments after conceding defeat.

More than 100,000 police and Civil Guards provided security across the country amid fears of violence by the Basque separatist group ETA, which has staged three car bombings since ending a 14-month truce in December.

No incidents were reported from the Basque country or elsewhere Sunday. Initial results were expected late Sunday.

Aznar, a 47-year-old former tax inspector, campaigned for another four-year term on the strength of an economy that grew 3.7 percent last year. The jobless rate has dropped from a staggering 23 percent to 15 percent.

He took office in 1996 after unseating Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who had governed for nearly 14 years and whose fall was mostly blamed on corruption scandals that tainted his administration.

This time the Socialists were led by Almunia, 51, a former cabinet minister who claims Spain's economic bonanza has benefited mainly the wealthy, in particular business people close to Aznar. He wanted to impose a one-time windfall tax on former state-owned companies and earmark the money for pensions.

Seeking to galvanize leftist forces, his party has struck an alliance with the communist-dominated United Left, Spain's third largest party, which for years had accused the Socialists of being centrist sellouts.

The campaign was overshadowed by three car bomb deaths blamed on the armed Basque group ETA. Both Aznar and Almunia reject ETA's separatist goals, so the Basque conflict has not been a major issue in the election.

ETA's political allies, Euskal Herritarrok, which has two seats from 1996 called on its supporters to boycott Sunday's election.

ETA, blamed for nearly 800 deaths in its campaign for an independent Basque nation, called a cease-fire in September 1998. The peace process fell apart after a single round of talks.