jueves, marzo 13, 2008

Weekend of elections


As some of you might know (unfortunately I don't know how this is known in other countries), Spain had day of elections last weekend and the result was the same as 4 and 8 years ago: the PSOE, party of J.L. Zapatero, won. So socialists have 4 more years of commanding Spain.

Share of popular vote with 99.99 per cent counted

PSOE (Socialists) 43.6%
Popular party (Conservatives) 40.1%
IU (Reformed communists) 3.8%
CIU (Catalan nationalists) 3.1%
PNV (Basque nationalists) 1.2%
Esquerra (Radical Catalan nationalists) 1.2%
BNG (Galician nationalists) 0.8%

Source: Spanish interior ministry

"Of the total votes, the PSOE got 11.064 million (43.64%) while the PP got 10.169 million (40.11%). A total of 25.514 million voted, or 75.32% of Spain’s total eligible voters.The biggest losers of the elections were the left-wing Izquierda Unida (IU), which lost 3 deputies to end at 2, and Esquerra Republicana of Catalonia, down 8 deputies to 3."

The following four years will be very challenging for PSOE, especially on the economic front. Spain is being hit hard by the subprime crisis and slower economic growth.

"The election was held in the wake of the slaying on Friday of a former Socialist party councilor, Isais Carrasco, by suspected Basque militants.

In his victory speech, Zapatero paid tribute to Carrasco, saying he should have been celebrating the victory with his family.

Carrasco was buried Saturday, a day before the vote. Town halls across Spain honored him at noon Monday by holding five-minute silent vigils.

ETA has killed some 85 people since the late 1960s. Late last year it blamed Zapatero for a lack of progress in peace talks.

The timing of the attack on Carrasco was reminiscent of an election-eve massacre by Islamic militants who killed 191 people in a string of bombings against commuter trains in Madrid on March 11, 2004. Three days after that attack, Zapatero won a surprise victory amid a wave of voter outrage at the ruling conservatives, who blamed the attacks on ETA even as evidence of Islamic involvement mounted."



On the other hand, we had other kind of elections this weekend. The spanish song for the Eurovision contest, something quite controversial here, much more than I expected, cause some purist and other not so purists took very badly the decision of the spanish people, who voted the song for representing our country in that show.
Well the thing comes from the song itself; a parody song of shit-summer-songs that are quite famous here. It's a bad-made song, but with that purpose. And I guess, people voted that song because of 2 main reasons:

- They think Eurovision Contest is a stupid show that maybe the less important are the songs or that all songs are bad enough.
- The positions of the last years of Spain were poor enough, always at the end of the queue (the position it deserved, by the way), so this time, people got tired and voted the "stupid song, that it will be one of the last ones, but at least we will laugh"


My opinion, is that, though I didnt vote, is shared with both points, so I am happy that song represents Spain :)
The bad thing... like other stupid songs that were created like parody or fun of summer hits, this song, "Chiki Chiki"... I fear it will be a total success and people start to like it (as it is already happening). It shows that masses are also quite dumb...

So, this is the representation of Spain in the Eurovision Contest:


Funny that they will have to change the lyrics because he talks about Zapatero and Rajoy in the song, the 2 leaders of the 2 big politic parties of Spain.
It seems it is forbidden to talk about politics in that show-contest.

By the way, let's remember other star appearances of Spain last years:
2007 - position: 20/24

2006 - position 21/24

2005 - position 21/24

So yes! I think this year Spain has the best song in a lot of time!! :D