Civil War Haunts Spanish Election Campaign

Spain's bruising general election campaign took another bitter turn yesterday when the parties began rowing over the civil war.

The rightwing prime minister, José María Aznar, called on the Socialist party leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to order his campaign team to stop making references to the conflict which killed at least 500,000 people. His demands came after the Socialist leader of the Catalan regional government, Pasqual Maragall, warned of a "return to 1936", the year General Francisco Franco and others rebelled against the elected government, if Mr Aznar's People's party were elected for a third time.

Gen Franco was Spain's dictator from the end of the civil war in 1939 until his death in 1975.

Mr Maragall claimed that if the Socialists were not elected, or if the People's party did not change its attitude to regions such as Catalonia and the Basque country that are demanding further devolution of powers, there would be a return to the atmosphere of 1936.

"We need a Spain that is capable of living calmly with its own diversity," Mr Maragall said. "If we do not manage that, then we have failed as a country once more and we will go back - to 1936, to the beginning of the 20th century."

Mr Aznar said these statements had to be retracted: "That is like saying that if you do not agree with me then you are prepared to return to the times of the civil war.

"Whoever is in charge in the Socialist party ... should retract that completely."

One of the Socialists' main weapons during a campaign in which they trail some 10 points behind the People's party has been to paint Mr Aznar and his deputy prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, as part of a new authoritarian right.

"They seem imbued with the true faith, enlisted in a new crusade between the angel and the devil," Miguel Angel Aguilar, a columnist for the leftwing El País daily, said of the People's party yesterday.

"One could say that we are busy trying to reconstruct, as fast as possible, the two Spains that we thought had been reconciled in our [1978] constitution after the fratricide of the civil war," he added.

Mr Aznar has decided not to run again in the general election in March and has handed over the reins of the People's party to Mr Rajoy.