MADRID (Reuters) ? Prime Minister elect Mariano Rajoy was under pressure on Monday to give rapid details of his policies to overcome the worst economic crisis for generations, after his center-right party won Spain's biggest election victory in 30 years.
The euro zone debt crisis claimed its fifth government victim in Sunday's election as voters savagely punished the outgoing Socialists for a crisis that has pushed unemployment to the highest rate in the European Union at 21 percent.
Under Spain's long transition process, Rajoy will not take power until around December 20 but he will have little time to bask in the huge victory for his People's Party.
There is pressure for him to calm jittery markets with some word on what are expected to be deep and painful austerity measures. Since his victory he has only said that there will be no miracles to fix the crisis.
Spaniards are resigned to a battery of measures to resuscitate the economy that could make things worse before they get better and at least initially increase unemployment, with 5 million people already out of work.
Spain, the euro zone's fourth largest economy, has been pushed closer to the kind of bailout claimed by Ireland, Greece and Portugal as its borrowing costs soared last week to untenable levels.
Rajoy has so far pointed to labor market and a financial reform as well as sweeping changes in the public sector, but has not given clear policy lines, relying instead on voter anger against the Socialists to rocket him into power.
"It will not only be demanded that Rajoy fix the economy but that he also renews political life," said right-leaning newspaper El Mundo in an editorial.
"He will have to adopt unpopular measures which will probably not be accepted either by unions or by the Socialist opposition," it added.
Spaniards blame the Socialists for reacting too late to manage a collapsed housing boom which has left the nation sliding toward its second recession in two years.
"There will be no miracles, we haven't promised them, but we have seen in other times that when things are done well, they produce results," Rajoy, 56, told rapturous supporters in his victory speech on Sunday night.
"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.
FIFTH VICTIM
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 all 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, although the landslide victory was anticipated for months in opinion polls.
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, the first key tests of confidence in Rajoy's leadership.
"The spectre of recession and an unavoidable commitment to reduce the public deficit will stitch a straight jacket to restrict the hand of the new economy minister," said newspaper Expansion in an editorial.
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.
TREASURED INSTITUTIONS
Many leftist voters are concerned Rajoy will cut back Spain's treasured national health and education systems.
Fed up with the Socialists, they turned to smaller parties or stayed away from the polls and 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.
When the Socialists took power in 2004 Spain was riding a construction boom fueled by cheap interest rates, infrastructure projects and foreign demand for vacation homes on the country's warm coastlines.
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.
(Additional reporting by Tomas Cobos, Nigel Davies, Martin Roberts and; Carlos Ruano in Madrid; Editing by Barry Moody)
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