Well, the people have spoken and I do not like what they said at all. With half the votes counted, the Socialist Party will score over 160 seats, while the PP will drop to around 140. The other big gainer was Esquerra Republicana, who are now a major force in Madrid with about eight deputies. CiU will drop to 10 or so.

What happened? It's clear: the people of Spain are not willing to risk standing up to domestic or international terrorism and would prefer to appease the terrorists in hopes that they will be left alone in the future. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will be the next Prime Minister, and one of the first things he will do is pull Spain out of the Coalition. Spain will join the Paris-Berlin axis. I assume Spanish troops will soon be leaving Iraq.

The especially bad news is that Zap doesn't have an absolute majority and will have to form a coalition with the Communists and just maybe Esquerra Republicana, just like here in Barcelona and Catalonia. Prepare yourselves for four years of that. Carod-Rovira as Interior Minister. Good God.

The Madrid bombings changed everything. The people have decided that Islamic terrorists are responsible, though that is in no way determined yet, and they have decided that it is the fault of Jose Maria Aznar and the PP government. Congratulations to the terrorists, whether ETA or Islamic: you've done your job. You disrupted the election. You beat Aznar and Rajoy and the PP, who were way ahead in all the polls before the bombings. And congratulations to the leftist parties, too. They won this election--well, not quite fair and square, more like pretty dirty, what with exploiting the bombing to accuse the government of lying with no evidence. But they won. They won, democratically, a clear victory.

A victory for appeasement. A victory for cowardice. The Spanish people demonstrated today that they have no courage.