MADRID - Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy was under pressure on Monday to give rapid details of his policies to overcome the worst economic crisis for generations, after his center-right party won Spain's biggest election victory in 30 years.

The eurozone debt crisis claimed its fifth government victim in Sunday's election as voters savagely punished the outgoing Socialists for a crisis that has pushed unemployment to the highest rate in the European Union at 21 percent.

Under Spain's long transition process, Rajoy will not take power until around Dec 20, but he will have little time to bask in the huge victory for his Popular Party (PP).

There is pressure for him to calm jittery markets with some word on what are expected to be deep and painful austerity measures. Since his victory he has only said that there will be no miracles to fix the crisis.

Spaniards are resigned to a battery of measures to resuscitate the economy that could make things worse before they get better and at least initially increase unemployment, with 5 million people already out of work.

Spain, the eurozone's fourth-largest economy, has been pushed closer to the kind of bailout claimed by Ireland, Greece and Portugal as its borrowing costs soared last week to untenable levels.

Rajoy has so far pointed to labor market and a financial reform as well as sweeping changes in the public sector, but has not given clear policy lines, relying instead on voter anger against the Socialists to rocket him into power.

"It will not only be demanded that Rajoy fix the economy but that he also renews political life," said right-leaning newspaper El Mundo in an editorial.

"He will have to adopt unpopular measures which will probably not be accepted either by unions or by the Socialist opposition," it added.

Spaniards blame the Socialists for reacting too late to manage a collapsed housing boom which has left the nation sliding toward its second recession in two years. "There will be no miracles, we haven't promised them, but we have seen in other times that when things are done well, they produce results," Rajoy, 56, told rapturous supporters in his victory speech on Sunday night.

"Spain's voice must be respected again in Brussels and Frankfurt ... We will stop being part of the problem and will be part of the solution," said Rajoy.

Spain was the fifth European nation to see a change of leadership because of the spreading eurozone crisis, following Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy.

The PP, formed from other rightist parties in the 1980s after Spain returned to democracy following the end of the Franco dictatorship, won the biggest majority for any party in three decades.

The PP took 186 seats in the 350-seat lower house, according to official results with all the vote counted. The Socialists slumped to 111 seats from 169 in the outgoing parliament, their worst showing in 30 years.

Reuters

(China Daily 11/22/2011 page11)