Televised debates agreed.

Yesterday around 7 pm in a centric Madrid hotel the campaign directors for PSOE and PP, Jose Blanco and Pio Garcia Escudero, met to discuss the possibility of a face off between Zapatero and Rajoy on live TV. They agreed to have two debates one during the last week before the electoral campaign officially starts and one in the last week of the official campaign (sometime at the beginning of March). They will meet again next week to discuss the format and contents of the debate.

This will be the first debates between candidates since 1993 when Felipe Gonzalez and Jose Maria Aznar debated live on TV. That time around PSOE won the election. In the 1996, 2000 and 2004 campaigns PP refused to attend the debate.

A week ago Zapatero challenged Rajoy to a televised national debate. PP candidates have never been very keen on televised debates, neither in Parliament, but the latest are compulsory by law. Normally incumbents prefer not to celebrate debates because that puts the challenger at the same level with them. However challengers are pretty much forced to say yes to debates or else they are perceived by the public as too weak to take on the incumbent and therefore provide a credible alternative, and supposedly better, governmental programme.

This time around seeing that Zapatero, the incumbent, challenged Rajoy didn't really have an excuse not to attend. But Rajoy is hating the idea of a debate, he knows he's a worst speaker than Zapatero by far and he knows he can only come worse off, even more than he's at the moment. That's why he has asked for two debates, first one to see what Zapatero weak points are to attack them in a second one that will stay in the viewer's mind. Will it work? I extremely doubt it, but PP's dirty tricks are well known so PSOE should be careful about negotiating the format and contents. Zapatero debating skills are well-known and he can take the final blow to Rajoy then, but expectations for him are so high that a bad performance could boost Rajoy and put PSOE in bad shape for the last sprint to the finish line. Overall great news for Zapatero and PSOE.

I am very excited, a proper national debate live on TV. Now, problem is I have to figure out how to watch it from London.