Rajoy announced yesterday that he is not going to step down: he called a party convention for June and announced that he would stand as a candidate for another term as party president. Esperanza Aguirre said she would not be a candidate, and Gallardon publicly backed Rajoy. So we'll see what happens.

It looks pretty clear that the PP hard-liners, secretary general Angel Acebes and party spokesman Eduardo Zaplana, are on their way out, to be replaced by moderates Pio Garcia Escudero and Esteban Gonzalez Pons. The name of Francisco Camps, premier of the Valencia region and also considered a party moderate, has appeared a lot lately; Gonzalez Pons is his man. Aguirre is backing Manuel Pizarro for one of these spots, and he'd be a good choice as well.

Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the interior minister, has told Zap he wants a different job; he'd like to go back to being the PSOE spokesman in Congress. Zap's going to reshuffle the cabinet; I bet Maleni Alvarez gets thrown out on her bum, and that Pedro Solbes, Fernandez de la Vega, and (unfortunately) Moratinos will stay on.

So the Generalitat has a new genius plan to bring more rental flats on the market; they will pay the landlord up to six months' rent in case the renter is a deadbeat. See, the problem is that Spain has insane renters' rights laws, and it's nearly impossible to evict anyone, so nobody wants to rent out any vacant apartment he might own except at exorbitant prices. Besides, the rent-control laws force the landlord not to raise the rent by more than the official rate of inflation during the minimum five-year standard lease.

The little teenage bastards that set the homeless woman on fire back in January 2006 are finally going to be tried; they're looking at 28 years each, though they'll probably wind up serving no more than half that. This happened right here in Sant Gervasi, just ten minutes on foot away from my house, and the two dirtbag murderers are from nice middle-class Catalan families. I just don't see why anyone would be so cruel and cowardly. First they beat her up and then they poured turpentine on her and burned her alive. Just for fun. And they were so stupid they did all this in the vestibule of a bank branch where she was trying to sleep; of course, there was a surveillance camera there, and it filmed every single thing these shits did. They'd be looking at the death penalty in the US, and I certainly wouldn't sign any petitions for mercy.

Everyone's all bent out of shape about the Barça, because a couple of weeks ago they were only two points behind Real Madrid, and now they're eight points back after two straignt losses in the League. Barça is still alive in both the Champions' League (final eight) and the Spanish Cup (final four), though; they're the favorite to win the Cup, though I imagine that one of the English teams will win the Champions. I'd bet on any of the four against Barcelona right now. There is going to be a shakeup in the clubhouse at the end of the season no matter what happens. Out: Rijkaard, Ronaldinho, Deco, Henry, Zambrotta, Edmilson, Thuram, Oleguer, Ezquerro. In: Cesc and Poulsen, rumor has it. There's also a dumb rumor that they want to sign Lampard, which I would not do.

Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia is looking mighty two-faced these days; he's been accused of manipulating Wikipedia entries for both money and sex. Not that he's done anything illegal, but there sure is a contrast between Wikipedia's self-proclaimed high-mindedness (have you ever looked at their immensely long list of policies, many of which are contradictory?) and the tawdry behavior Wales is accused of.

Speaking of tawdry sex, the Republicans are thrilled with the Eliot Spitzer scandal. Schadenfreude city. They hate his guts and would love to see Spitzer not only out of office, but in prison too. And if this mess makes Hillary Clinton look bad too, that's just gravy.

David Mamet has a very interesting piece in the Village Voice on his move to the political right. Just goes to show that if you're not a liberal at age 20, you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative at age 40, you have no brain.

Anglosphere comment on the Spanish election:

The Guardian has a column that doesn't sound much different from what I've been writing. This is worrying.

The LA Times has a story focusing on Rosa Diez.

The Times's story focuses on Zap and the Carrasco murder.

The BBC focuses on Zapatero's "liberal social reforms," which I don't think were all that big a factor in the election.

The New York Times also focuses on "social changes" in Spain.

Pink News focuses on Zap's pro-gayness.

Reuters focuses on the economy.

The AP's report is surprisingly detailed.

Fallout from the election: Zap and CiU are in no hurry to cut a deal, but I don't see any other way out for Zap. He's unlikely to get support from the PNV, and anyway he needs seven seats for a majority and the PNV only has six. Zap would also need the Canary Coalition's two votes, or the Commies' two votes, for the 176 votes in Congress necessary to seat him as prime minister.

CiU is making noises that sound like they want a coalition, with a couple of ministries in Madrid. And that's not all they're going to want. My guess is that the Catalan Tripartite falls apart sometime pretty soon because of the collapse of the Commies and Esquerra, and Montilla will govern from the minority with punctual support from CiU. As CiU considers itself the opposition party in Catalonia, it won't go for a coalition government in the Generalitat.

The Catalan Socialists want a big payoff for their huge win on Sunday that put Zapatero over the top. They want two or three ministries for themselves, and they want one of their people in the inner circle of the PSOE politburo. They're going to have to swallow the appointment of hardcore Spanish nationalist Jose Bono as president of the Congress, though.

Rajoy is going to stay as PP leader, though they're going to have a national convention this fall. I bet somebody else is chosen there, since Rajoy has lost twice already. La Vanguardia says that Madrid regional premier Esperanza Aguirre is maneuvering for the top spot.

The head that rolled at Esquerra was that of head counsellor Joan Puigcercós, who announced his resignation in order to serve as full-time party secretary. There's going to be a faction fight between Puigcercós and Carod-Rovira at ERC's convention in June. I hope they both lose.

Regional results in all of Spain:

Catalonia PSOE 25, CiU 11, PP 7, ERC 3, IU 1
Andalusia PSOE 36, PP 25
Basque Country PSOE 9, PNV 6, PP 3
Navarre PP 2, PSOE 2, NaBai 1
Madrid PP 18, PSOE 15, IU 1, UPD 1
Asturias PP 4, PSOE 4
Canaries PSOE 7, PP 6, CC 2
Galicia PP 11, PSOE 10, BNG 2
Valencia PP 19, PSOE 14
Murcia PP 7, PSOE 3
Castile-La Mancha PP 12, PSOE 9
Extremadura PSOE 5, PP 5
Cantabria PP 3, PSOE 2
Aragon PSOE 8, PP 5
Balearics PP 4, PSOE 4
La Rioja PP 2, PSOE 2
Castile-Leon PP 18-PSOE 14

So, basically, the PP either wins or breaks even everywhere but Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the moderate regional nationalists win much of the conservative and / or Catholic vote; Andalusia, the Socialists' historic heartland and recipient of much government spending; and Aragon, where the PP angered the locals with the damn water plan. Note that anti-Catalan Valencia is the region where the PP has the biggest advantage.

Atypical provinces: Sun Belt Almeria, in Andalusia, backed the PP; industrial Leon, in Castile-Leon, backed the PSOE.

Other news: The Eliot Spitzer scandal has made the news over here, and there's some whingeing about Yankee Puritanism, as usual. I figure the guy crossed three lines: 1) he's a law-and-order crusader, and he is a paying client of the organized-crime prostitution racket 2) he cheated on his wife, embarrassing her and their three children 3) he must be pretty stupid to be paying hookers while he's governor. If you're a single adult and you are sexually active, society pretty much figures that's your business. But if you're married and patronizing hookers, that's not.

How much you want to bet that he's some kind of desperate sex weirdo whose wife refused to cooperate with his kinky fetishes? That's the only logical explanation I can come up with.

Of course, I think prostitution ought to be legalized in official red-light districts, which would be established far away from residential areas. Then you can require medical checks and licensing, you can tax it, you can keep the kids away, you can drive pimps and organized crime out, and you can keep an eye on the prostitutes' personal safety.

In fact, I'd do the same thing with gambling; I'd legalize casinos, but only in the red-light districts, and I'd require by law that the casinos be as unattractive as possible: no alcohol or drugs on the premises, no entertainment, no restaurants, just gambling tables and slot machines. And I'd legalize drugs as well, and require them to be sold only in the red-light districts, too.

Get this: The Vatican came up with a new list of mortal sins for the 21st century. It's incredibly dumb. They are:

1) "Bioethical violations," such as birth control. Ridiculous. We should be giving out free condoms and Norplant to anyone who wants them to keep the birth rate down and control sexually transmitted diseases. Which, if the Pope pulled his head out of his ass, he would see as the biggest threat to human health in Africa's poorest countries.
2) "Morally questionable experiments." If we're talking Dr. Mengele or Brave New World, I completely agree, but the Pope means stem cell research, which is going to save millions of lives in the medium term.
3) Drug addiction. I thought drug addiction was now considered a disease. Talk about blaming the victim. I also thought alcohol was a drug. This means everybody in Ireland is going to hell.
4. Polluting. So everybody who drives a car is going to hell, too. Besides, the most pollution per capita is caused in poor countries where poor people use biofuels (wood and dung) for cooking and heat. Just like Jesus and all our ancestors until about 1900 did. These people are sinners? I don't see that they have much choice.
5) "Contributing to widen the gap between rich and poor." Ridiculous. Who cares if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too? If poor people's incomes double, and rich people's income is multiplied by five, is that bad? That's precisely what is happening around the world right now.
6) "Excessive wealth." What? You're a virtuous person who makes a lot of money because of his skills and abilities, makes generous charitable donations, behaves honestly in business, loves his fellow man, brings up a good family, and you're going to hell because you have a nice house and a Mercedes? Come on.
7) "Generating poverty." How precisely does one generate poverty? By making irresponsible decisions and flunking out of school, spending all your money on beer and fags, and knocking up three girls by the time you're 19? Any poor bastard who falls into that trap is going to have enough trouble here on earth, and it seems pretty harsh to punish him in the afterlife.

I have a positive view of Christianity in general and the Church in particular. Judeo-Christian ethics are at the heart of human society today. I think the Church does much more good than harm. I also think it is sometimes absolutely full of crap, and this is one of those times.

Final election results: PSOE 169 seats, the PP 153, Convergencia 11, the PNV 6, Esquerra 3, the goddamn Commies 2, CC 2, the BNG 2, CC 2, UPD 1, and NaBai 1.

Regionally, the PSOE was the most-voted party in Asturias, the Basque Country, La Rioja, Aragon, Catalonia, Extremadura, Andalusia, and the Canaries. The PP was most-voted in Galicia, Castile-Leon, Cantabria, Navarre, Madrid, Castile-La Mancha, Valencia, Murcia, and the Balearics.

Looks like what happened is that the Socialists ate IU's and ERC's lunch, while the PP gained scattered seats at the expense of regional parties.

The Catalan press is playing up how important the sweeping Socialist victory in Catalonia was; if Catalan votes were left out, the PP would have won the election. The PSC won 18 seats more than the PP in Catalonia; they won only 16 seats more than the PP in all of Spain.

Commie leader Gaspar Llamazares has already resigned, and Carod-Rovira is expected to be next. Rajoy looks like he's going to try to hang on as leader, claiming victory because the party gained five seats. At the very least he needs to get rid of the hard-right elements in the party leadership, meaning Zaplana and Acebes.

The actual election results look a lot like the surveys El Periodico was running during the week before the elections. The exit polls, as usual, underestimated the PP vote, since being conservative is so socially unacceptable in some places that some people don't admit it.

Spain's definitely made a turn against radical regional nationalist parties. Count it up: in Catalonia, nationalist parties (CiU and ERC) won only 14 seats out of 47. In the Basque Country the nationalists (PNV) won just 6 seats out of 18, with ETA-front party Herri Batasuna banned from the ballot and its supporters boycotting the election, and peaceful separatists EA and Aralar shut out. In Galicia the BNG won only 2 seats out of 23. Only CiU increased its number of seats, by just one.

I'm thrilled that the goddamn Communists damn near got wiped out, down to 2 seats from the 23 they had as recently as 1996.

It looks like I called the effect of the murder of Isaías Carrasco wrong; I figured it would help the PP, but instead it probably had no effect, or even helped the PSOE by increasing the turnout as a whole.

I'm fairly optimistic for the next four years: Zap can't screw things up too badly, and his policies are going to have to be pretty moderate in order to keep his alliance with CiU. I don't see any other way out of it for him; he'll have to either form an official coalition, giving CiU a couple of ministries in Madrid, or govern from the minority with CiU support. And that support won't be forthcoming if he tries to do anything outrageous.

About a year ago, a gentleman living near Mataró, along the coast north of Barcelona, paid a visit to his neighbor's stable, where four horses were kept. He tied one of them up and buggered it, "causing various injuries to its rectum." The horse was discovered "in a state of shock," hyperventilating and with a greatly accelerated heart rate, bleeding from the anus. The gentleman has been charged with felony animal abuse, with the aggravating circumstance of sexual abuse. His trial starts today; he faces a ten-month sentence, which will be suspended, and he'll have to pay the €771 veterinary bill.

What a sick weirdo pervert. Anally raping a horse. This guy clearly needs to be separated from the rest of society for a long time. And he will be, since he's up on further charges, this time for raping a human.

I am truly disgusted by sadists who take pleasure from harming creatures weaker than they are, human or animal, and I would punish them harshly. Get all the pot-smokers and dopers out of jail, and replace them with horse-rapers and women-beaters.

Some guy in Madrid, for example, was convicted of driving down the highway and throwing a litter of kittens out the window, one by one, apparently for the fun of watching them splatter. He was fined €360 for misdemeanor animal abuse. Look, Judge, if he'll do it to a cat, he'll do it to a person as well. Lock his ass up right now and protect the rest of us law-abiding citizens and harmless animals.

By the way, the Chinese are currently conducting a cat holocaust in Peking in preparation for this summer's Olympics; the Daily Mail broke the story yesterday. Just another reason to boycott it; I won't be watching.

My post-election article is up at Pajamas Media, so go read it.

Well, voter participation was 75% and the PSOE won. With 92% of the vote counted, it's the PSOE with 43.8% and 168 seats, and the PP 40.1% and 154 seats. CiU has 10 seats, the PNV 6, IU 3, ERC 3, CC 2, the BNG 2, UPD 1, and NaBai 1.

In Catalonia, it's PSC 25 seats, CiU 10, the PP 7, ERC 3, and ICV 2.

I'll have an article up tomorrow morning at Pajamas Media, so check it out.

With 90% of the vote counted, it's PSOE 167-PP 155, and these results aren't going to change much. Looks like Zap will be able to either cut a deal with CiU or govern from the minority. Now the question is: what's CiU's price going to be? I imagine they'll demand a breakup of the Catalan Tripartite, and that they replace ERC and Communist officeholders at both the municipal and regional level inside Catalonia. The question is whether they'd get that.

The verdict from down at the (Catalan-speaking, pro-Barça) bar is that everyone's happy the PP lost, nobody's real excited about the Socialists, and several people are all pissed off right now, because both Esquerra Republicana and the Barça got their asses kicked.

So the PSOE gains three seats and the PP gains seven over 2004. Rajoy and the leadership are going to try to spin this as a win. It's not.

Spain is getting ever closer to having a real two-party system. The third party at the national level, the United Left, has nearly been wiped out. The moderate nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country held their ground. The rest of the regional parties did poorly. Esquerra's down from eight seats to three, which means Carod-Rovira is no longer taken seriously by anyone. And Rosa Diez won a seat--does this mean the birth of a centrist third party? Probably not.

Pepe Blanco just claimed victory again, and he signed off with "Good night and good luck," just like Zap. Jesus. This has got to stop now. In case you're wondering where it came from, that movie lionizing Edward R. Murrow was real big among the Illustrated and Enlightened around here.

I'm going to go down to the bar to watch the second half of the Barça-Villarreal game on pay-TV, and while there I will interview the local Catalan working class for their reactions.

With 54% of the vote counted, it's PSOE 171-PP 150. It looks like the count is going to stabilize somewhere around here: both main parties gaining seats, the PSOE more than the PP, and the smaller parties as the big losers. Along with the PP leadership.

With 43% of the vote counted, it's PSOE 169-PP 151. This is starting to look something like the exit polls showed, but it gives the PSOE a bigger win than the surveys were predicting a couple of days ago.

Thoughts off the top of my head:

1) Zap's not going to get an absolute majority, but he's going to be able to govern with the aid of CiU.
2) Whether the PSOE can cut a deal with the PNV is questionable, since the prosecutor's office is trying to put the PNV's leader in jail, and they might not be feeling too friendly.
3) Can Rajoy claim victory if the PP wins more seats than they got in 2004--that is, more than 148? I say no.
3a) Because I think the PP leadership has botched both the message and the way it was communicated over the last four years.
3b) And because I think Zap was a weak candidate who could have been beaten by a competent opposition.

33% of the vote counted: PSOE 170 seats, PP 150.

As usually happens, the official figures change a great deal over the normal election evening: with 30% of the vote counted, it's PSOE 172 seats, PP 144.

With 17% of the vote counted, the official figures are PSOE 173 seats, PP 136. These are, of course, by no means definite.

TV3's exit poll for Catalonia gives the PSC 45.7% of the vote and 24-27 seats; CiU 20.9% and 9-11 seats; the PP 16.3% and 7-8 seats; ERC 8.4% and 3-4 seats; and ICV 3.9% and 1 seat.

Pepe Blanco, the Socialists' organizational secretary (that is, top apparatchik) has claimed victory. The PP is not conceding anything so far; they still think the high turnout in Valencia and Madrid is going to help them out.

So what does it mean? If the surveys are right, and they all seem to agree, then just off the top of my head:

1) Zap has very close to an absolute majority, and he has more of a mandate than he did in his first term.
2) Rajoy will have to step down as PP leader, perhaps not immediately, but they need a new candidate for the next election.
3) The two leading candidates to replace Rajoy have to be Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and Esperanza Aguirre.
4) I don't think Zap is going to do anything particularly different than he did in his first term.
5) The PP strategy of confrontation obviously did not work.
6) Neither the debates nor the murder of Isaías Carrasco had much effect on the voters.
7) The turnout was nowhere near low enough to help out the PP.
8) The Communists got completely destroyed.
8a) How much you want to bet that most of the Communist voters went over to Zap because they're so angry at the PP?
9) CiU did pretty well, and if Zap gets below about 170 seats, he'll have to cut a deal with them. The PNV did pretty well too, so a good showing by the comparatively moderate regional nationalists.
10) The more radical regional nationalist parties, ERC and the BNG, got stomped.
11) Zap's not going to negotiate with ETA any more no matter what happens.
12) I bet he doesn't keep most of his promises, though he's going to have to carry through on the €400 tax rebate.

All the other TV network surveys have similar figures to TV3's. They have the PSOE between 163 and 178 seats, and the PP between 142 and 152.