SPAIN: People's Party (PP) candidate Mariano Rajoy holds closing campaign rally ahead of parliamentary election

Record ID: 215654

  • Title: SPAIN: People's Party (PP) candidate Mariano Rajoy holds closing campaign rally ahead of parliamentary election
  • Date: 19th November 2011
  • Summary: MADRID, SPAIN (NOVEMBER 18, 2011) (REUTERS) RAJOY GREETING SUPPORTERS CROWD IN STADIUM WAVING FLAGS RAJOY GOING UP ON STAGE VARIOUS OF RAJOY SALUTING CROWD SECTION OF YOUNG SUPPORTERS IN CROWD RAJOY APPLAUDING AND SMILING FORMER SPANISH PRIME MINISTER JOSE MARIA AZNAR AT RALLY
  • Embargoed: 4th December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Spain, Spain
  • Country: Spain
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2076I08GM3UYHZIGWNW058WJ4
  • Story Text: The leader of Spain's People's Party (PP) Mariano Rajoy told his supporters on Friday night (November 18) that their vote on Sunday (November 20) will be a message to show the world Spain can "do things well."
    Opinion polls before Sunday's election show Rajoy's People's Party win with a large lead over the ruling Socialists.
    The winner on Sunday will have to deal with the European Union's highest unemployment rate and an economy that risks following the fate of Greece, Portugal and Ireland, all of which had to seek a financial bailout.
    As a result, economic problems have dominated the election campaign.
    Rajoy, a cautious former interior minister, will not be sworn in as prime minister until around Dec. 20 if he wins as expected. But before that he is expected to try to calm the markets by laying out details of how he will shrink the public deficit and reform the economy.
    Rajoy said a win on Sunday would send a positive message to the world.
    "Your vote is a message within Spain and outside Spain. It's a message of a nation that will tell the world that here we can do things well, that here things will be done well and the fact that there was one government which was not up to it, was just a parenthesis in Spanish history that is now over. This is a message we are going to send to the world on Sunday," Rajoy said.
    But Rajoy added that things can not be fixed overnight.
    "I will tell the Spanish people, and first I will tell you who are here, it's inconvenient to lie to oneself, things won't get fixed overnight, that everything will not be sorted by Monday like magic. We, Spaniards, know that we still need a lot of effort to achieve our goal, and that we will need much more to move Spain forward, we know that nothing comes for free, we know it well," Rajoy said.
    The slogan of Rajoy's campaign was "Join the change".
    PP supporters like Gabriel Parano were hopeful Spain could change.
    "It's a big night tonight because things will start to change in Spain on Monday. On Monday, we will start getting out of the hole, which they (Socialists) put us in," Parano said.
    "The People's Party does not have a magic wand but what they have, above all, is good sense, they honour their word, they have stability and they have a project," another PP supporter Amparo Moriche said.
    Spaniards widely perceive the government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero as having mishandled the response to the mounting euro zone debt crisis.
    Spanish austerity measures, along with bail-outs and forced recapitalisation of banks, have succeeded so far in keeping the country from an international rescue.
    But they also aggravated unemployment. In 1.4 million households no one has a formal job, and consumer groups say a million homeowners are at risk of having their property seized by the bank.
    The Spanish stock market closed higher on the last day of trade before the election, compared with falls in London, Frankfurt and Paris.
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