Zapatero announces early elections

The President of the Government of Spain, aka Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero today announced that Spain would hold the legislative elections on November 20th.These elections were originally going to take place in March 2012.

The Socialist (PSOE) candidate is Alfredo Rubalcaba (left) and Conservative (PP) candidate is Mariano Rajoy.

I’m going to write more analysis of both of them in the next few days with comments on the elections. However I will say that they have both been in politics and government for years. Rajoy has lead his party in Opposition for over a decade, and was a minister in the Aznar government before that. Rubalacaba has been involved in every socialist government since Gonzalez came to power in the early 80s.