Friday, March 14, 2008

Election Day Report (Albeit Very Late)

So, I will not be talking about the results. Zapatero´s party, PSOE, won but not by enough to have an absolute majority in the Congreso de Diputados. Here are some photos of the day, with explanations ;-)This is the first polling place I was able to find. I woke up at 9 a.m. with the intention of finding one in my neighborhood (Tetuán). Unfortunately, I didn´t realize they only open some high schools (where the polling takes place) for polling, not all of them. So I spent thirty five minutes trying to find the one in my neighborhood before going to an area that I knew better than my own neighborhood, pathetic I know!

The list of who votes where with regards to the interior of the school. People from one street vote in one room, others vote in another, etc.

These photos are just for fun. The school isn´t too far from a church. There´s always at least one member of La Guardia Civil on the street on Sundays, they have a barracks nearby. So I decided to take his photo w/o him realizing.

After lunch, I finally made it to my barrio´s high school for the elections. Here I was able to take every single list for the parties that could be elected to the Congreso de Diputados and their version of the Senate. The Senate´s ballot was much simpler than the Congreso´s. I had to come back later and finish the job, as I was only able to take about 10 of the 40 lists for the diputados before someone looked at me with a ,"What are you doing?" look on his face.

Izquierda Unida observer. Iu is the only hard left party that ever garners any votes. When I mean hard left, I mean borderline Communist!An advisory about the elections (forget what it´s about and am too lazy to translate right now).


The end of the night, about fifteen minutes before the polls closed. We were given estimates by gov´t TV a few minutes later. They weren´t too far off.

6 comments:

  1. I'm surprised you were allowed to take pics inside the polling booth? And where were the armed guards?

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  2. can you recognize me ?

    i don't know what happen here
    but i come back soon

    I think i have some thing to say

    Have a nice time

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  3. Thanks, Matt. Will look more closely later.

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  4. Hi matt

    what a interesting !
    we had election too.It was parliament election,everybody tried to don't care about it.we've boycott it.It's an illegal election , anyway

    i'm happy to see here.i think you have a patner

    goodluck

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  5. Ellee, the Guardia Civil wasn´t visible, besides outside the one polling station I went to in the morning. I´m sure they had some unseen capability though. As far as uniformed guards, the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía had one or two of their people sitting inside every polling station. I´m not sure about the station in the morning but the one in Tetuán where I live (where the majority of the photos were taken), there was a police station literally 50 m on the other side of the plaza. If anything went down, it would be over very quickly.

    Pagan,
    I´m assuming you read one of the Iran blogs I used to read. I´m glad to see you here too! I saw briefly about five days ago that the "conservatives" "won". Make no mistake, I know much about Iran´s "elections." I hope you guys can get a system that actually works, instead of the theocracy. Keep up the civil disobedience! Good luck!

    ReplyDelete

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