ABSTRACT
After eight years in opposition, political scandals, and leadership struggles, the Socialist Party PSOE regained office in 2004 and was reelected in 2008. Both elections affirmed the PSOE, led by its new leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as the party with the highest number of votes and seats, but left it short of a majority in Congress. Both times, Prime Minister Zapatero formed a minority government, supported by smaller leftist and regional parties. While the economy was performing well with strong growth and job creation during most of his first term in office, he embraced an agenda of social reform, which provoked an increasingly critical and polarizing response from the main opposition Popular Party (PP), resulting in the “crispación” (tension, antagonism) of Spanish politics. At the beginning of Zapatero's second term, politics was quickly dominated by the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions.
