Spanish Elections

Spanish elections were a little while ago now (back on November 20th), but I keep getting sidetracked when meaning to update this blog. Anyway, when I was in Spain in the spring of 2008, Spain was voting for its next prime minister. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), the incumbent, won. I don't think there's a maximum amount of terms a prime minister here in Spain can be in office, but regardless, the whole country has been really unhappy with Zapatero for a while now because of the economy, the lack of jobs, etc. So he wasn't even running again. Which perhaps is a shame; I don't want to delve much into politics here, but Zapatero did do some good things while he was in office, at least in my opinion; things that for a still very young democracy like Spain are quite surprising and even controversial, like legalizing gay marriage back in 2005, and a few years later, abortion. Anyway, this time around, Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popular (Popular Party), who ran against Zapatero back in 2008, won. I don't know much about Spanish politics (or politics in general, for that matter), but the PP is the more conservative political party here, and I also don't really like Rajoy, so I'm not thrilled about that. But hey, we'll see how it goes. You can read more about it in this NY Times article.