PeteEU
VIP Member
Spain will elect a conservative government for the same reason why it elected a socialist government four years ago - voters usually kick the party in power during hard times no matter what the party.
4 years ago the sitting government got re-elected. They have been in power for 8 years.
They got elected on the heels of the Madrid bombing correct ?And I must say I found their re-election to be stunning as they were already on the the radar screen as having major financial problems at that time.
They got elected after the former conservative government blamed ETA for the bombings. But the conservative government was highly unpopular at the time because of massive scandals at top level and regionally/locally. The Prime Minister at the time Aznar, had already said a year earlier he was not running again in large part because of the scandals and Rajoy was his "last minute" replacement. The Madrid bombings was just the last straw for many independents and marginal voters.
As for their re-election. They got in part re-elected because of the scandals of the previous government... people had not forgotten the Madrid bombing scandal. Also the whole crisis in Spain is in large part due to the policies put in place by the Aznar government, and this fact was used to taint Rajoy and his party at the 2008 election. The socialist government was dealt a big shit turd in 2004 and have not had the ability (or maybe willingness) to deal with the structural problems in especially the labour market, that are causing most of the problems in Spain.
Now saying that, I personally have zero faith in Rojay being able to do jack shit since he has been unable to present any clear economic policies so far as far as I have seen. He has been saying things about contract reforms (something the Socialists have been doing) and of course cutting taxes.. not like they are that high. Remember these structural problems were around 8+ years ago also, and the Conservative government at the time did nothing to fix them.. in fact they made it worse in some areas.
I am hoping that Rojay has the balls to nationalise parts of the building sector and use the housing glut that the banks cant sell as rental properties for Spanish citizens. A sad fact in a good way, is that the last decade of building boom never benefited the Spanish people but the outsiders (like me) who desired vacation homes in the hot and warm south. This drove home prices up to unrealistic levels and meant most Spaniards were driven out of the market. This of course also meant that Spaniards dont have much mortgage debt (compared to other countries... a large part of the debt in housing is debt owed by building companies who have tones of homes they have built but cant sell.. something like 86 billion dollars worth), but also sadly meant it is quite common for children and even married couples living with their parents till their late 30s or early 40s, and usually take over the family home on their parents death.
We shall see... something has to be done that is for sure.