Socialists win Spain in wake of train attack

MADRID, Spain -- The opposition Socialists scored a dramatic upset win in Spain's general election Sunday, unseating conservatives stung by charges they provoked the Madrid terror bombings by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq and making Spain a target for al-Qaida.

It was the first time a government that backed the Iraq war has been voted out of office. Incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to bring home the 1,300 troops Spain has stationed in Iraq when their tour of duty ends in July.

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party declared victory with 99 percent of the votes counted. The party soared from 125 seats in the outgoing 350-seat legislature to 164 in the next one. The governing Popular Party fell to 148 from 183.

Rodriguez Zapatero began his victory speech with a minute of silence for those killed in the terror attacks.

"Today voters have said they want a change of government," Rodriguez Zapatero said.

The numbers will leave him short of a majority, which is 176 seats. They will have to seek help to form a government.

The win capped four tumultuous days that began with the terror attacks, then saw massive street rallies against the bombings, smaller ones against the government, the arrest of five suspects in the bombings, including three Moroccans, and a reported al-Qaida claim of responsibility.

The Socialists ruled Spain from 1982 to 1996 but ran afoul of corruption scandals and were voted out of power.

Savoring victory again, outside Socialist party headquarters several hundred jubilant supporters cheered. But they, too, remembered the 200 people killed in Thursday's railway blasts. "Not all of us are here. Two hundred are missing," the crowd shouted.

Ruling party candidate Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's hand-picked successor, said he had called Rodriguez Zapatero to congratulate him.

Pre-election polls had favored the ruling party to win handily.

But on election day voters expressed anger with the government, accusing it of provoking the Madrid attacks by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which most Spaniards opposed.

The government had insisted that its prime suspect in Thursday's rail bombings was the armed Basque separatist group ETA, even as evidence mounted of an Islamic link in the railway bombings, which killed 200 people and wounded 1,500.

The government was accused of withholding information on the investigation to save the election.

Throughout Sunday, voters said they lost faith in the ruling party, in power since 1996.

"I wasn't planning to vote, but I am here today because the Popular Party is responsible for murders here and in Iraq," said Ernesto Sanchez-Gey, 48, who voted in Barcelona.

Some voters, however, expressed support for the ruling party precisely because it endorsed the Iraq war, and for its crackdown on ETA.

Mari Carmen Pinadero Martinez, 58, a housewife, said she "voted to help the government end terrorism" as she cast her ballot near the downtown Atocha railway station where trains were bombed.

In El Pozo northeast of Madrid, site of one of the four blasts, a ruined train car was in clear view of the polling station as were flowers for the victims, signs stating "Paz" (Peace) and dozens of lit candles.

Some of the voters, teary-eyed, held onto relatives and friends for support.

On Sunday, a Basque-language daily published a statement by ETA in which the group for a second time denied involvement in the attacks.

A handful of young protesters screamed "murderer" at Rajoy, the ruling party candidate for prime minister, as he cast his vote in an elementary school outside Madrid. "We did not want to go to war!" they shouted.

As Aznar voted in Madrid, some bystanders cheered him while others shouted, "Manipulator!"

Aznar did not seek re-election, complying with a pledge to not seek a third four-year term.

A videotape purportedly from al-Qaida was recovered from a trash basket near a Madrid mosque after an Arabic-speaking man called a Madrid TV station to say it was there, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.