Here's a terrific article from the NY Times about the Spanish election. I didn't post a link because you can't read it if you're not registered with the Times.
FRANCO'S STILL DEAD
In Spain's Vote, a Shock From Democracy (and the Past)
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: March 21, 2004
ADRID -- ?P?SALO!" - "Pass it on!"
After terror attacks here on March 11 that killed more than 200 people, a simple exclamation became a call to battle against the center-right government of Prime Minister Jos?Mar?a Aznar. It spread like lightning across Spain - not in cries or whispers, but in cell-phone text messages and on the Internet.
That call offers a key to understanding an election three days later that ousted the ruling party, shook the coalition led by the United States in Iraq and, in surprising ways, highlighted the vibrancy of Spain's democracy.
In the first hours after the bombing, Mr. Aznar's government launched an intense campaign to persuade the Spanish people that the bombings were carried out by Basque terrorists, an enemy long familiar to Spaniards. The two parties were virtually tied in their final internal polls, and leaders in both parties agreed that voters would feel easier about continuing to support Mr. Aznar if the bombs were the work of locals rather than Al Qaeda.
Even when evidence began to mount that this was an international plot involving Al Qaeda, the government stuck to its fixed position about the Basque terrorists, and a widespread perception grew that the government was manipulating the truth. On election day, the biggest surprise was the extent to which this had enraged both young and old.
Some Spaniards felt that the crisis of confidence unleashed demons lurking in Spain's history. It was only 29 years ago that General Francisco Franco died, bringing to an end nearly four decades of dictatorship.
"We are still hearing the echoes of Franco," said Jos? Antonio Martines Soler, editor of the Madrid newspaper 20 Minutes who had been kidnapped, tortured and subjected to a mock execution for an article he wrote during the Franco era. "In every act, in every gesture, in every sentence, Aznar told the people he was right, that he was the owner of the truth and those who disagreed with him were his enemies."
His analysis is far from universally shared, and to claim that Franco's ghost still stalks the land would overstate the case. Still, the heavy-handedness of the Aznar government triggered memories of the distortions of truth, and of the censorship and the propaganda that prevailed during the dictatorship.
Fernando Savater, one of Spain's best-known writers and philosophers, argues a different point. For him and others, the rage that had built up against the government for a year had its roots in Spain's participation in the war against Iraq. "Francoism is the joker you pull out of the deck when you have no other argument," he said.
In fact, 90 percent of the country opposed the war, according to widely-accepted polls, a reflection in part of profoundly antiwar attitudes that can be traced to feelings left over from the civil war that brought Franco to power.
Suddenly, history and current events combined to produce a whirlwind of resentment. Perceptions that the government had misled the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq blended with misleading public declarations about the investigation into the Madrid bombings, and both fed memories of the manipulations of truth under dictatorship decades ago.
The vote became a referendum on the government's commitment to democratic rule.
And on that account, Mr. Aznar was vulnerable. For the last four years, when he enjoyed an absolute majority in parliament, he had governed with a forceful, even arrogant style. He refused to heed the call of Socialists who urged him to explain to Congress the decision to join the American-led war against Iraq; his choice of Mariano Rajoy as his hand-picked successor was made with little consultation even in his own party.
Mr. Aznar pushed for a law that made religious education in schools mandatory, enraging many Spaniards who were proud of a Constitution that had broken the overwhelming power that the Catholic Church had enjoyed under Franco. Mr. Aznar's opposition to an ambitious grass-roots movement in Spain that seeks to locate and dig up mass graves where Franco's political opponents are buried was seen by his political opponents as an effort to suppress historical memory.
In that atmosphere, even after the votes were cast, a rumor was posted on the Internet that the ruling Popular Party had unsuccessfully tried to persuade King Juan Carlos to postpone the election. According to the rumor, the king refused the request, saying it would constitute a de facto coup d'?tat.
Few people took the rumor seriously. But the ruling Popular Party was so concerned that when Pedro Almod?var, the country's most celebrated movie director, publicly accused the government of trying to hatch a coup the day before the election, it slapped him with a lawsuit.
What triumphed, finally, was Spain's democracy. The election result was a product of high voter turnout, the enthusiasm of young voters and the migration of opposition voters away from minor parties to the Socialists, because that offered them a chance to win. These people voted "to defeat a common enemy," said Manuel Nu?ez, a pollster for Ipsos Eco Consulting in Madrid, which conducted an exit poll of polling stations representing 500,000 voters.
Nearly 40 percent of Spain's 40 million people either were not born when General Franco ruled or are too young to remember him, and the far right parties dedicated to Franco's memory attracted little support on Election Day. "
But that is not to say Spaniards ignore their past. There is, in fact, a dramatic revival of interest in it among young adults. A flood of books, a major museum exhibition last year and a television documentary in January have helped the country re-examine the terror of the 1936 army uprising and civil war that brought Franco to power.
All of that played its part in the election. And it was a loss the government was hard pressed to explain. "The government is leaving with a very good record with clean hands," said the outgoing foreign minister, Ana Palacio, in an interview. "To be the victim of a smear campaign! No blame can be put on our honesty and our achievements. We did not lie. It is not in our character."
