By the way, I've noticed huffing and puffing from the right and now some news outlets to the effect that the Spaniards may have voted out of fear and therefore chosen unwisely.

I have an anecdote from my Spanish friend which suggests that the results are not quite so simple (duh!).

He wrote:

"The socialist victory has been a big and good surprise. Aznar's party, has been lieing (to lie) about the attack. Until saturday night (around 1 am), they claimed that it was ETA. The foreign affairs ministry, Anna Palacio, sent an note on thursday, to all the spanish embassy around the world, telling them that the attack had been performed by ETA,
and that they had to say this when they had the chance to speak on public. That's very very sad...
Yesterday, I voted for Zapatero. It's the first time I vote for the socialists, but I didn't want those liars and loosers to win again.
You can be shure that the way the government has acted, not telling the truth about the attackers, hiding information all the time, and trying to convice people that ETA was the one who did it, has make a lot of people to re-think their point of view. You could feel it on the streets, and you could breath this ambience.
In Barcelona, saturday night, around 7.000 people where in front of the Partido Popular (Aznar's party) site, claiming to know the truth before voting.
Those people got together spreading messages by internet and by the cellular phones (SMS). It was amazing. People were driving cars and making noise with the horns, yielling, and hitting pans and cook stuff on the balconies. That happened in almost every big city of Spain.
People wanted to know the truth, and Aznar was trying to hide it until monday, so he (his party) would probably win the election.
Everybody knew that if Al-Qaida was the attacker, it was because of the Aznar's "help" to Bush's administration of going to the war to Iraq. If Aznar would addmit it, then he would loose the elections. If ETA was the attacker, then he could win the elections.
You have to know that (before the war) millions of people rallied against the Iraq war, and this asshole (Aznar) did what he wanted.
20 spanish well known movie directors, did each of them, a 3 minutes movie, about how the absloute majority of Aznar, has gone those 4 years. They gave the film for free, so everybody could see it
before the elections. No TV planned to show it. Everybody knows that it was because of the govt. pressure. In some cinemas, and culturar places, and independent TVs they played it. You can visit their website if you want (www.haymotivo.com). It was a stunnig criticism about Aznar.
I think that the main reason of the results are because of the attack, and because of that, a lot of people have been thinking about the combination of the war, and how Aznar has managed big problems that we have had during those 4 years, but a lot of people voted because the bunch of liars that they are."

There you go. One man's perspective. Notice that this was the first time he had voted for the socialists and that he did it mostly because he was sick of being lied to by Aznar and that there were several issues at stake for him.


I hear "From Out of Nowhere" by Faith No More, as it happens.