Ramón Gorriarán / Agencies
This was the last State of the Nation debate before the next general election in 2008
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was keeping a surprise up his sleeve to announce during Tuesday’s State of Nation Debate. All families legally resident in Spain will receive 2,500 euros for each child they have or adopt from now on. Zapatero’s speech was a euphoric one packed with this and more promises for the coming months and even years. Nevertheless it was the subject of the Basque terrorist group ETA that stole the limelight in the debate that followed between Prime Minister and opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy.Zapatero accused Rajoy of failing to fulfil his duty as opposition leader because his sole argument was the fight against terrorism. Rajoy returned the insult claiming that the Prime Minister was incapable of governing because he lied about his talks with ETA. He went on to call for the general elections to be brought forward.
This in any case was the last State of the Nation debate before the next elections and was the bitterest of the three that Zapatero and Rajoy have led so far. It was undoubtedly a taste of the heated clashes we can expect in the run up to the 2008 poll.
On the subject of ETA and the failed attempts at starting a peace process, Zapatero confirmed once again that now there was no possible way open for dialogue. In his speech he drew attention to the achievements of his Government over the last four years as far as employment, the economy and social policy are concerned. Rajoy dismissed these achievements as “poor”, and returned to his preferred issue of the ETA talks.