Conservatives won 186 of the 350 seats in parliament; the Socialists won 110. But the sharp swing was more a result of millions of voters abandoning the Socialists for smaller parties, not conservatives picking up new voters, suggesting a country more dispirited with the policies of the past than excited about the future. 
 
 The leader of the conservatives, Mariano Rajoy, 56, will not take over for another month, but he is widely expected to announce his economic team and strategy in the coming days. 
 
 “It is times like these that measure what men and societies are made of,” Rajoy said Sunday in his victory speech. “Our destiny is to play a big role in and with Europe. We will be more loyal but also more demanding. . . . There aren’t going to be any miracles, but we didn’t promise them.” 
 
 Sunday’s vote gives Europe another leader closely aligned with the austerity-based consensus that the continent’s strongest economies say is the solution to what plagues the weaker ones. In recent weeks, leaders in Italy and Greece have been forced from their perches. 
 
 Still, Rajoy may have limited influence over problems that have spread to France, Austria and the Netherlands — countries long associated with fiscal discipline and economic power — which saw their borrowing costs spike last week. France has called for continent-wide solutions more radical than those applied so far, including the printing of more money to prop up struggling countries, something Germany staunchly opposes. 
 
 In Spain, Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had abandoned many of his party’s historic positions to implement budget cuts aimed at getting the country’s finances under control. But they did little to head off the nation’s 22.6 percent unemployment rate. 
 
 Last week, Spain’s borrowing costs spiked to their highest level since 1997, and one of Rajoy’s first tasks will be to soothe investors’ fears about his country’s viability. 
 
 Rajoy’s challenger, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, 60, seemed to accept defeat long before the election was held. Zapatero decided earlier this year not to stand for reelection. 
 
 “Countries like Spain are on the brink,” said Fernando Fernandez, an economist and former International Monetary Fund official who teaches at IE Business School in Madrid. “This government will have the moral authority” to make changes, he said. 
 
 Fernandez said that in addition to another round of budget cuts, he expected the new government would overhaul the labor market to make it easier to hire and fire workers, which could help create jobs in the long term but might add to joblessness in the immediate future. 
 
 Rajoy, an unflashy former cabinet minister who has led his People’s Party since 2004, had tried twice before to win Spain’s top job. The third time, he has been the beneficiary of a terrible economy. 
 
 “Rajoy isn’t charismatic at all,” said Narciso Michavila, who runs the polling firm GAD3. “But in this moment, that’s precisely his strength. He’s this boring guy, but you can rely on him.” 
 
 By many measures, Spain has been a model when compared with Italy and Greece, where political gridlock is still impeding any economic changes. But that has not helped avert the country’s troubles. Spain experienced a real estate bubble, comparable with the most recent one in the United States, that led to high levels of household debt and bad balance sheets at banks when it burst two years ago. Industries that previously powered the economy, such as construction, are now virtually nonexistent, pushing unemployment over 40 percent among workers ages 15 to 24. 
 
 Voters Sunday had little enthusiasm for the election, and many said they saw little difference between the two main parties. The Socialists had 4 million fewer votes than in the 2008 election. The conservatives gained just over 500,000 compared with their previous results. 
 
 “They’re the same dog with a different collar,” said Rosario Gomez, 43, a housecleaner who lives in the working-class Vallecas neighborhood of Madrid. “I work less and less, and I have less and less money.” 
 
 Special correspondent Pamela Rolfe contributed to this report. ||||| * Centre-right People's Party wins by wide margin 
 
 * Investors expect immediate action 
 
 * New leader Rajoy will not be sworn in for a month 
 
 By Judy MacInnes 
 
 MADRID, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Mariano Rajoy's centre-right People's Party stormed to a crushing election victory when voters punished the outgoing Socialist government for the worst economic crisis in generations. 
 
 Rajoy, who led his party to an absolute parliamentary majority in Sunday's election, is widely expected to push through drastic measures to try to prevent Spain being sucked deeper into a debt maelstrom threatening the whole euro zone. 
 
 "Difficult times are coming," Rajoy, 56, told supporters in his victory speech, with financial markets hungry for details on how he will attack a steep public deficit threatening to push the euro zone's fourth economy toward a perilous bail-out. 
 
 "Spain's voice must be respected again in Brussels and Frankfurt... We will stop being part of the problem and will be part of the solution," said Rajoy, who is not scheduled to take office for a month. 
 
 Voters vented their rage on the Socialists, who led Spain from boom to bust in seven years in charge. With 5 million people out of work, the European Union's highest jobless rate, the country is heading into its second recession in four years. 
 
 Spaniards were the fifth European nation to throw out their leaders because of the spreading euro zone crisis, following Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. 
 
 The People's Party (PP), formed from other rightist parties in the 1980s after Spain returned to democracy at the end of the Franco dictatorship, won the biggest majority for any party in three decades. 
 
 The PP took 186 seats in the 350-seat lower house, according to official results with 99.95 percent of the vote counted. 
 
 The Socialists slumped to 111 seats from 169 in the outgoing parliament, their worst showing in 30 years. 
 
 MARKET FRIENDLY 
 
 Spain's stock and bond prices may initially react positively to the vote because Rajoy, a former interior minister, is seen as market friendly and pro-business. 
 
 Rajoy, who will not be sworn in until around Dec. 20, will not get much breathing space. 
 
 The nation's borrowing costs are at their highest since the euro zone was formed and yields on 10-year bonds soared last week to close to 7 percent, a level that forced other countries like Portugal and Greece to seek international bail-outs. 
 
 The Spanish Treasury heads back to the markets with debt auctions on Tuesday and Thursday this week, which will test confidence in Rajoy's pending leadership 
 
 "The fact the PP has won by a large majority is a very good sign for the markets. It means stability," said Teresa Sabada, professor of political communication at IESE business school in Madrid. 
 
 "The best scenario now would be for Spain to announce some new emergency austerity measures but I am not sure whether this will happen or not." 
 
 Economic gloom dominated the election campaign, with more than 40 percent of young Spaniards unable to find work and a million people at risk of losing their homes to the banks. 
 
 "Being a civil servant I'm not optimistic," said Jose Vazquez, 45, after he voted in Madrid. 
 
 "We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we're still going to be cooked." 
 
 TREASURED INSTITUTIONS 
 
 Many leftist voters are concerned Rajoy will cut back Spain's treasured national health and education systems. 
 
 Too soured with the Socialists, they turned to smaller parties or stayed away from the polls. The abstention rate was higher than in the last election in 2008. 
 
 The United Left, which includes the former communist party, won 11 seats in the lower house, its best showing since the mid-1990s and way up from the previous legislature when it had only two seats. 
 
 Small parties doubled their presence in the lower house of parliament, taking 54 seats compared with 26 in the last legislature. 
 
 Rajoy has been cagey about exactly where he will cut public spending, but he has pledged to meet the country's target to trim its public deficit to 4.4 percent of economic output next year, which implies drastic measures. 
 
 But he risks pushing Spain back into its second recession in four years and provoking massive street protests. 
 
 When the Socialists took power in 2004 Spain was riding a construction boom fuelled by cheap interest rates, infrastructure projects and foreign demand for vacation homes on the country's warm coastlines. 
 
 Droves of young men dropped out of high school to take building jobs and bought flashy BMWs with their inflated wages. 
 
 But the government, consumers and companies were engulfed in debt when the building sector collapsed in 2007, leaving the landscape dotted with vacant housing developments, empty airports and underused highways. 
 
 "Something's got to change here in Spain, with 5 million people on the dole, this can't go on," said Juan Antonio Fernandez, 60, a jobless Madrid construction worker who switched to the PP from the Socialists. 
 
 Pablo Cortes, 27, who can find only occasional restaurant work despite his degree in architecture, saw no reason for optimism from the result. 
 
 "Does anyone really believe the PP is going to solve this? How, with more austerity for the have-nots and favors for the rich?" he said.
– Spain's conservatives won a decisive victory yesterday, grabbing a clear majority of the parliament and returning to power for the first time since losing to the socialists in 2004, reports the Washington Post. The People's Party won 186 of 350 seats in the lower house, giving it the power to take strong action to reform the economy in the face of soaring debt and 22.6% unemployment, the highest in Europe. “Countries like Spain are on the brink,” said one economist. “This government will have the moral authority” to make changes, he added. But others pointed out that the Popular Party's victory did not come from gaining support—it had just 500,000 more votes than 2008—as much as from the socialists losing it, as leftist voters fled for a host of minor parties. "There aren’t going to be any miracles, but we didn’t promise them," said PP leader Mariano Rajoy, now the incoming prime minister who is expected to introduce heavy cuts in spending in an attempt to win over international investors. "Spain's voice must be respected again in Brussels and Frankfurt. We will stop being part of the problem and will be part of the solution."