A good day for Zapatero.

After a couple of weeks of a good news cycles for PP yesterday PSOE grabbed the initiative again.

In the morning it was Rajoy who made a fool of himself by announcing that if elected he will create a new ministry of the family and social welfare. This announcement was aimed at capitalising on the Church's rally a week ago in favour of the 'traditional' idea of the family, that of a man and a woman. I surfed around different blogs and comment sections of newspapers and other media outlets to find out the reaction to this 'unusual' announcement. It was unanimous, every single comment, besides of those coming from the less sane citizens of Spain, either joked about the proposal or felt it was outright populist. Furthermore, many requested to know what would then happen with the already established Social Affairs Ministry. A legitimate question I would say, specially if the creation of new and innecessary bureaucracy comes from a self-appointed economic liberal that is giving away tax cuts as if they were sweets. And they say PSOE can't handle the economy, wait for Mr. morality to come in with a blank cheque for the religious right.

The second and most important announcement of the day came from France. The first Sarkozy-Zapatero bilateral summit ended with the announcement of the creation of a new permanent police command formed by French and Spanish forces to cooperate in the fight against ETA's terrorism. ETA has been by far the least popular issue for the Government in the last four years. PP's disloyal opposition to the peace process became the first time in the democratic history of Spain that a party used the fight against terrorism for electoral purposes. But that opposition of simplistic arguments and outright lies have hurt the Government specially after the failure of the cease fire. This new announcement shows that Zapatero gave peace a chance but didn't disregard police action as essential in the fight against ETA. This new agreement with France is by far the most important in the history of the conflict since Mitterrand agreed to 'offer a helping hand' in the 1980s to Felipe Gonzalez. PP officials were gutted, Sarkozy, a rightwing populist like them had just blown one of their key issues for the campaign. Sarkozy's decission together with the rejection today by Congress of PP's proposal for a debate on Batasuna's legal status, political wing of ETA, before its dissolution have further weakened the terrorist front in the campaign.

So things are looking up. I argued on Sunday that PSOE has a good chance to win with an even greater majority on March 9. The economic debate will blow over because although it could be bad for PSOE, PP has got no economic team to compete with the Socialist one. The debate on the fight against terrorism is looking better by the day for PSOE and if the illegalisation of Batasuna's sister party, ANV, arrives before the election it will be even better for the Socialists. If PSOE can keep control of the news cycle until the campaign officially starts and then runs a serious and energetic campaign I believe everyone will be suprised of the end result. I still believe an absolute majority is possible for Zapatero.