A new leader for the Socialists

摘要

At last, with their third leader in four years since the political demise of Felipe Gonzalez, who ran Spain for 14 years until his electoral defeat in 1996, Spain's Socialists may have found someone to challenge the country's dominant centre-right People's Party (pp). Moreover, the current prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, who thrashed the Socialists in a general election four months ago, says he will not lead his party into the next general election, due by 2004. So the Socialists' new man, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a 39-year-old lawyer from northern Castile, now has a chance of getting himself known to Spaniards as an alternative national leader at a time when the pp's next candidate for prime minister is still unknown. Mr Rodriguez Zapatero has made a fair start.