Llamazares elected IU candidate for March election.

As it was expected, Gaspar Llamazares, Secretary General of IU (United Left), has won the nomination to the Presidency of Spain in the March general election. The party's Federal Political Council nominated him today wiht 84 votes in favour and 2 abstentions.

This is good news both for the Left in Spain as well as for the country as a whole. Llamazares, unlike his predecessor Julio Anguita, is a serious statesman with a coherent vision of how politics should be carried out.

Llamazares understands that IU isn't anymore a party aiming to win elections but rather to influence governments from the opposition. As I mentioned in my piece yesterday on electoral behaviour in Spain, IU's most useful weapon is its ability to take power away from PSOE. Anguita, in the 1990s, disgracefuly joined Aznar in his demagogic attacks against President Gonzalez. Anguita was used by Aznar as a pawn in his strategy of creating a united Left-Right front against PSOE and succeeded at it. Anguita saw himself praised in the right-wing press and with his messianic attitude towards politics always believed he was pushing himself all the way to the Presidency. He never realised how much Aznar despised IU and after he won the 1996 election Anguita was quietly brushed aside and disappeared from the political scene.
Llamazares was elected as Secretary General of IU after PP's second electoral victory in 2000. He redefined IU's political strategy by putting as his first aim a left-wing government. He believed that IU would be more influential with a PSOE government than with a PP government even if IU's share of the vote went down. He has put IU back as PSOE's natural ally in Parliament and proven his ability to have his voice heard by the Zapatero government in this last term. He has also been able to get IU back into powerful coalition governments in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
With Llamazares in charge at IU I know both IU and PSOE are better off in March.
In his nomination acceptance speech he has hinted towards political consensus and higher particiation in the political sphere. Something this author and many other Spaniards welcome in times when such consensus among the Left is more needed than ever.