sob

Point by point:

Personally, I disregard polls once the election results are in. I don't plan on posting any quotes in Spanish, so I'll therefore be limited to English ones, even if you don't like them.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe...ain.elections/

"With 99 percent of ballots counted, the opposition Socialists were ahead slightly with 34.7 percent to 33.9 percent for Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party.

It was the first time since 1991 that the Socialists won more votes than the Popular Party in local elections.

But it was only a slight gain for the opposition over 1999 results, and only a slight decline for Aznar's party, which held on to the mayor's seat in Madrid as well as control of Valencia and smaller cities and towns in central Spain."

http://www.economist.com/displayStor...ory_id=1817707

"Only 200,000 votes out of more than 23m cast separated the two main parties. The PP was a single percentage point down on its previous election showing in local and regional elections, in 1999, with 34% of the vote to the Socialists' 35%. Looking on the bright side, Mr Aznar declared that his party “now has more mayors and more local councillors than any other”. His PP not only held its old bastions but even stormed a few more, such as Burgos and Granada. It did well in Valencia. In Galicia, whose coastline was besmirched by the Prestige's oil, the PP got 41.5%, only four points less than in 1999.

The party's biggest swoop was on Madrid's city hall, where Mr Aznar's wife, Ana Botella, number three on the PP's slate, will now make her political début. The mayor-elect, the able and ambitious Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, though not close to the prime minister, has suddenly emerged as the PP's new star.

Indeed, he is already being talked about as a possible replacement for Mr Aznar when he steps down from the top job, as promised, before the general election."


So I'm having difficulty with this statement:

Especially since his wife was elected to office! By the way, I'm not short and I don't have a mustache, but even if both were the case, I'm unaware of the effect either has on the worth of an elected official.

You can say anything, but other than classifying my son as an American, you're still 100% wrong.

My son learned Spanish from birth. All of his friends in Spain were Spanish, except for one American exchange student. Spaniards were unable to detect from his speech that he is American. In fact, at parties, he enjoyed it when someone he didn't know would say, after talking to him for a few minutes, "I hear there's an American here." His response was usually, "There is? Let's go find him." He was routinely accused of bullshitting when he told people he was from the US, during the year he lived there.

Additionally, while my son was in Spain, I was hosting a student from Madrid. For a year. That was helpful when I started making some very adrenaline-charged phone calls the day I turned on the news and saw the Madrid train bombing results. I guess this student (and his mother, for that matter) are also racists, because they didn't like muggers and drug dealers, either.

Since I see very little in your response other than personal attacks, I'd be interested to hear you mention how these Moroccans, who sneak into Spain with essentially nothing, are able to support themselves, since they're not citizens, and therefore can't legally be employed.

I can tell you what my son observed: (1) They sell pirated DVDs on the Metro. (2) They mug people on the Metro (my son observed one mugging, and his American friend, a rather large kid, kicked the asses of five Moroccans who tried to mug him. As luck would have it, he broke one of their jaws, so this particular one got arrested at the hospital.) (3) They sell drugs.

Okay, I'll qualify that. A LARGE NUMBER of them do.

Irrelevant personal attack noted and ignored henceforth.

So to wrap this up, every news source that reported on the elections contradicts your statement about the popularity of Aznar.

If you have any information about how well-loved the Moroccans are in Spain, I'd love to see it.

If you want to stick with your other personal attacks/name calling, and assertions about my "arrogant ignorance," fire away. I don't believe they helped your case, whatever it was.