Live News From Spain As It Happens

Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Sunday, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis.

With 99.8 percent of the vote counted Sunday night, the Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy, had won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

Spain is the third southern European country in two weeks to see its government felled by the debt crisis in the euro zone. In Italy and Greece, prime ministers were forced by mounting financial and economic woes to resign and give way to interim “unity” governments of technical experts, who are meant to take urgent but unpopular austerity measures to cope with the crisis and then call new elections.

Read more at nytimes.com

Spain's Socialists face voters' wrath over unemployment and economic stagnation at a parliamentary election on Sunday after presiding over the country's worst slowdown since World War Two.

The euro zone's fourth largest economy has gone from growing faster than any of its neighbours to stagnation in just three years and many voters blame Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for not reacting quickly enough when the crisis hit.

Here is a timeline of events leading up to the Nov. 20 election:

Read the timeline at Reuters.com

Political progress in Italy and Greece pushed stock markets higher but economists warned of stormy weeks ahead as attention turned to Spain amid fears it could be the next economy to come under the spotlight.

Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

Directors from the low cost airline Jet2.com have confirmed, after visiting the new installations on Monday, that the airline will transfer over to Murcia’s new international airport at Corvera next year and will commence flight operations there from November 2012.

Read more at TypicallySpanish.com

Spain goes to the polls in just under two weeks in conditions that look depressingly familiar. Unemployment, already the highest in Europe, has now risen to over 22%. Economic growth has staggered to a halt. Spain's sovereign debt remains under market pressure, in spite of tight fiscal restraint. Neither candidate of the two leading parties inspires, still less do they represent. Just over half of the "indignados", Spain's protest youth movement, turned out in May's municipal elections which wiped out the ruling socialists.

Read more at guardian.co.uk  Also, interesting comments to read at the end of that article.