by Maja Gojkovic

11.7 million tuned in to a live and televised debate to see the Prime Minister Zapatero and his opposition, Mariano Rajoy, battle it out, in their last opportunity to air their opionons and policies ahead of the elections on 9 March. 

According to the newspapers, the debate was a clear win for the prime minister and also according to the polls, as he came top in four opinion polls after the debate last night. Another poll for the TV station Cuatro gave Mr Zapatero 50.8%, against 29% for Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy.

The debate, yet again, was heated, as the two called each other liars in angry exchanges on the economy and terrorism. Mr Rajoy accused the government of weakness on the issue of immigration; Zapatero defended and responded to this by saying that immigrants were a contribution to the Spanish Society.

 Mr Rajoy continued to use immigration as his main line of attack, saying that, “Uncontrolled immigration is a danger, and some Spaniards may feel that they are negatively affected - when they try to access to healthcare or housing, or find a place in school for their children. Your policy has been weak.”

The prime minister pointed out the partnership agreements with African governments that had helped reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, he also explained that foreigners residing legally in Spain were net contributors to social security and had helped stimulate the economy.

Recent figures show that Spain accounts for well over a third of all net immigration into the European Union.

Another poll for La Sexta television put Mr Zapatero on 49.2% and his rival on 29.8%, with 21% calling it a draw.  The most recent opinion polls before Monday gave Mr Zapatero’s Socialists a lead of about 4% over the conservative PP.

Elections will take place on 9 March.

by Simon Rashleigh

I’m just a foreigner who speaks a little Spanish. I’m not even very interested in Spanish politics, but for some reason, I found myself inexorably drawn to the television on Monday at 10pm, to watch the great debate.

I confess I enjoyed it. I usually enjoy pre-poll debates. Just a few months ago I watched the antipodean version, as Rudd took on Howard for the grand title of Prime Minister of Australia. That was amusing, too.

In Australia, during the broadcast of the debate, the audience have the opportunity, as in Big Brother, to vote for their favourite candidate. The result is displayed as an oscillating line going up and down across the screen. As the potential leaders make their respective cases, this line tells us the audience’s affections for the candidates. It’s a great innovation, and a handsome creature to boot, so the line has become affectionately known as the worm. In late 2007, the worm favoured Mr Rudd over the incumbent John Howard.

Mr Rudd is now the PM in Oz, meanwhile in Spain, the hopefuls are still slugging it out. And on Monday, they provided us with another scintillating night of politi-tainment!

So, what was it like? Let me give you my brief impressions: The opening was great. Channel 1 gave us an hour-long build up. I’m not sure what it was about, the rules and the history I think, but I was cooking chicken and rice. When I walked in with my steamy plate, the two-sports reporters (hastily brought in for this once in fifteen-year job), began to talk excitedly of the pocos minutos que nos quedan (few minutes remaining). The time finally came for the start of the big debate, there were only 20 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds, and then:

Blackout

9

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1

funny blue twirling graphic. And then…

The camera zooms to an enormous beige table. It is big enough for two grown men to have a proper wrestle on. We zoom further to another sports reporter. It turns out he is the referee. I didn’t write down his speech, but it went something like this:

We are really very lucky and thanks to democracy and thanks to the two partidos agreeing to have a debate. Let’s go boys, you’ve already been briefed on the rules.

It was an appropriately over-the-top intro, and we were ready for the back-and-forth to begin.

Rajoy opened with 3 minutes very well spoken about why he should be boss and not Zapatero. Then for 3 minutes Zapatero spoke about why he should be boss and not Rajoy. Pretty much the whole debate went along in this pattern. For added excitement, the time for each candidate to speak was reduced to two minutes, and then one minute.

It appeared that both candidates had used a similar team of university graduates to produce bold-coloured graphs. These visual aids were employed to prove things such as steeply rising prices, robust economic growth, doublings of illegal immigrants and just plain ol’ unemployment being under control. Mr Rajoy, I suggest for the next debate, might need to show his graphs to the camera rather than to Señor Zapatero.

Both Zapatero and Rajoy became overly excited by the 60-second time-limit and got more difficult for an angloparlante to understand. Sr. Zapatero managed to calm down in “Topic 2: Social Issues”, but Rajoy never seemed to calm down for the rest of the debate. He also seemed to forget, as the debate rolled on, to tell us why he should be boss. Instead he concentrated a little too much on why Zapatero shouldn’t be.

I hate to take a cheap shot, but Mr. Zapatero has really pointy eyebrows. Perfectly pointy. But I liked the way he glared down his opponent from under those arches, barely glancing at his notes.

Mr Zapatero, could, I think, answer questions more directly. Or perhaps he can’t, which is why he didn’t. His strategy was to take rather scant regard of the issues brought to attention by his opponent, and instead made the case that his government has done well and should be elected on this basis. This technique worked because by the end of his allotted time, even I had forgotten the original questions posed.

So who won really? Well, Zapatero fairly easily if you ask me. Not necessarily for his politics, but for his style. Mr Rajoy did, however, successfully pose the question: está España realmente bien? If Rajoy was targeting an English speaking audience, which he ain’t, his slogan could well be: Is Spain OK? No way!

All in all, it was an entertaining couple of hours. The television academy did great work with the cameras and the editing, cutting to the reactions of the candidates as their opponent made a scathing criticism. For the record, Rajoy tended to look at his notes at these times, while Zapatero tried to distract his opponent with those eyebrows, before confidently scribbling down his rebuttal. And what I enjoyed most of all was the feeling of being at home. Democracy is democracy after all, and I felt like I was seeing the same Australian debate, just translated to Spanish. The issues were different but the politics, that is to say the game of politics, was the same. The only thing missing was the worm.

The candidates return next Monday for the return leg.