Free Republic

MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party took a beating Sunday in an election in Andalusia that saw the far right win seats in one of the country’s regional parliaments for the first time in decades. The Socialists (PSOE) — which have ruled the southern region uninterrupted for 36 years — came in first but could lose their grip on power if parties on the right team up against them. Juanma Moreno — the local leader of the Popular Party — said as the results came in that he would try to replace the Socialists’ incumbent regional leader,...

The leader of Spain's anti-austerity party Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, on Friday proposed forming a government with the Socialists, making a left-wing governing alliance more likely after last month's inconclusive election. Iglesias told a news conference he had informed King Felipe VI of "our desire to form a government of change with the Socialists and the United Left" and that he would seek the post of deputy prime minister. [...] Last month's general election produced a hung parliament in which a ruling majority cannot easily be formed. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party won the most seats, 119, but...

Spain's right stormed to a landslide election victory Sunday, an exit poll said, as voters toppled yet another eurozone government engulfed in a deepening debt crisis. Bowed by a 21.5 percent jobless rate, a stalled economy and spending cuts, the 36 million-strong electorate ended the Socialists' seven-year rule with a shattering defeat, the exit poll showed. Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party took an absolute majority of between 181 and 185 seats in the 350-member Congress of Deputies, said projections based on an exit poll by public broadcaster RTVE. The ruling Socialist party PSOE won between 115 and 119 seats,...

Often when hearing some of my fellow students' opinions, I feel like I'm listening to a condensed and neatly-packed week's worth of misleading rhetoric from Fox News. The lack of political diversity in some of these positions typically sounds like the children of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity spewing neo-con banter, such as the view that because the Spanish people ousted the conservative party, terrorism won. As an "impudent liberal," as these people would call me, I feel it to be my American duty to respond to these brash, conservative contentions. Why is every action outside of the extreme Bush...

George Friedman, who runs the Stratfor private intelligence service, spotted a change in al-Qaida's outlook over the last year. The Islamist terrorist organization, which previously treated George W. Bush as largely irrelevant to its global designs, now has zeroed in on the president. Combining that change with the terrorist triumph in Spain points to an ominous trend in the war on terrorism -- and in the U.S. presidential election. Failure of the Arab ''street'' to rise in response to the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has led to questions in the Arab world about al-Qaida's relevance. The coordinated...