BY RUISHA QIAN

 

ANCHOR LAUREN ZIMA

With a 22 percent unemployment rate and a serious debt crisis, Spain’s economic woes are overshadowing its election Sunday. Al Jazeera says...

“This is an election about austerity. … It isn’t about promising political sweetness. It’s about the cold reality of trying to build confidence ... It’s convincing the financial markets. That’s the real challenge.”

Polls have placed the Popular Party 15 points ahead of the ruling Socialists, who have been in power for seven years. The Daily Telegraph says...

“Such a result could help calm the markets, handing Mr. [Mariano] Rajoy’s party the absolute majority deemed necessary to push through a new round of austerity measures and job-creation incentives intended to cut the public deficit while creating economic growth.”

Mariano Rajoy has made raising employment and cutting spending the focus of his campaign. But a group called Los Indignados rallied in the center of Madrid on the eve of the election, calling for a boycott of both the Popular and the Socialist parties. One of the activists tells News24:

"We are taking steps backwards. Tomorrow we have the opportunity to change course. But what we see is that tomorrow the majority of Spaniards are going to elect a new head of the government who is nothing more than a lamb who is going to lead us to the mouth of the wolf."

Euronews spoke to people on the street, who also seem to have little confidence that either party could change Spain’s course.

“Whoever wins, wins, because we are not the ones who govern. We’re being governed from the abroad. We’re governed by foreign banks, by multi-millionaires from abroad, by Seniora Merkel, by Senior Sarkozy.

“The Conservatives are backed by multi-nationals and the banks, That’s why I am in a panic.”