The 4th Legislature (1989-1993) Felipe González called
general elections for October 1989, where he once again won the absolute majority, but this time by only one deputy - a relative setback previously seen in the
municipal elections of 1987, where the Socialists lost their majority in the big cities though keeping the municipalities of less than 50,000 inhabitants. As Santos Juliá pointed out: "The honeymoon between the Socialist Party and public opinion, which began in 1982, was coming to an end, although voters were in no hurry to vote for the rival party." Meanwhile,
United Left increased the number of votes (9.1%), which translated into 17 deputies. The
Democratic and Social Centre of Suárez did not exceed 8%, a setback that was confirmed in the
municipal elections and autonomic elections of May 1991, obtaining 4%. These elections saw the PSOE take a major blow as a result of the outbreak of the first corruption scandal, the "Guerra case", resulting in the loss of almost half of the mayorships in the most important cities it held since 1979, including
Madrid,
Seville and
Valencia. However, it kept the autonomous communities it governed except
Navarra, where the PP and
Navarrese People's Union obtained the majority. in 2013 The
Guerra case, uncovered in 1989, was the first scandal to undermine confidence in the PSOE and its administration. It was named after the brother of the vice-president, who was accused of illicit enrichment and influence peddling from the place he held in the Seville Government Delegation without holding any position, because he was his brother's "assistant". Alfonso Guerra played down the importance of the matter and, defiantly, refused to resign. PSOE's leadership supported him and the Socialist parliamentary group objected to the opposition's request to set up a committee of inquiry to investigate the case in Congress. The consequence of this refusal was the strained relations between the PSOE, on the one hand, and the PP and United Left, on the other, resulting in the "festering of parliamentary life". In the end, Felipe González chose to dismiss Alfonso Guerra in January 1991. In turn, Juan Guerra was sentenced in 1995 to 2 years in prison, a fine of 50 million pesetas and 6.5 years of ineligibility to hold public office. Alfonso Guerra's exit from the Government deepened the internal division of the PSOE, which had emerged in the 32nd Congress held in November 1990, during which the "
guerrista" sector (loyal to the still vice-president and critical of the Government) and the "
renovador" sector (loyal to President Gonzalez) clashed. This sparked the beginning of a dull struggle, intensified by the emergence of a new corruption scandal in May 1991, revealed by the newspaper
El Mundo, the
Filesa case, which this time involved the whole party. Filesa was the name of one of the three ghost companies created to illegally finance the PSOE by charging non-existent reports to industrialists and bankers between 1989 and 1991, in exchange for the awarding of public contracts, and for which the companies of the plot did not pay the corresponding taxes. In March 1993, a report by the experts of the Ministry of Finance established that Filesa had received more than 1,000 million pesetas by this means. President Felipe Gonzalez brushed off the matter, stating that he had "learned about it from the press." Judge Marino Barbero charged 39 people, 8 of whom would be sentenced in 1997 by the Supreme Court to penalties ranging from 11 years of prison to 6 months of arrest, a sentence that would be ratified by the Constitutional Court 4 years later and that only punished the fiscal crime, since the crime of illegal financing of political parties did not exist at that time. banknote with the effigy of King Juan Carlos I, issued in 1992 A third case of corruption that affected the PSOE was the so-called "Ibercorp case", also uncovered by the newspaper
El Mundo in February 1992. The governor of the
Bank of Spain,
Mariano Rubio, was accused and imprisoned for keeping an account with black money in Ibercorp, the financial entity of his friend Manuel de la Concha, former trustee of the Madrid Stock Exchange, also prosecuted. The former Minister of Economy and Finance, Carlos Solchaga, who had appointed Rubio, had to resign as deputy. This scandal showed the connections between the socialist government and the so-called "beautiful people", an expression used to designate the businessmen and
nouveau riche who had emerged in the socialist era. In the midst of this political climate, two major events scheduled for 1992 took place, placing Spain at the forefront of the world's media - it was "Spain's great year in the world," according to David Ruiz. The
Summer Olympics - the first of the "post-Cold War" period, where 171 countries participated (the highest number ever recorded) - were a complete success. The Spanish athletes won 32 medals, whereas in the previous Olympic Games in Seoul they had only won 4 medals. Likewise, 112 countries and 23 international organizations were represented at the
Seville Expo, attended by 18 million people, many of them arriving to the Andalusian capital on the
Madrid-Seville AVE. The two events provided "the opportunity to present Spain in the
Columbus Quincentenary as a modern country, definitely away from the romantic stereotype (of charanga, tambourine, bandits and toreros)". Spain's new image was accompanied by the strengthening of its international role, as evidenced by the birth of the
Ibero-American Summits, the celebration in Madrid of the
Middle East Peace Conference and Spain's active participation in the construction of Europe, such as the
Schengen Agreement in May 1991 and, above all, the
Maastricht Treaty that transformed the
European Community into the new
European Union. Likewise, the agreement reached in the referendum on Spain's permanence in NATO was complied with and the US bases at Zaragoza and
Torrejón de Ardoz were dismantled, while those at
Rota and Morón de la Frontera remained, and the Spanish government sent three Navy units to support the allied military operations led by the United States during the
first Gulf War of 1990–1991. The two major events of 1992 concealed the fact that a strong economic recession had begun, which resulted in a brutal increase in unemployment that would reach an unprecedented figure of 3.5 million people, or 24% of the active population. Socialist leaders recognized that 1992, which was to be the year of Spain's projection of modernity to the world, was "catastrophic". In May 1992, a general strike was called by UGT and Workers' Commissions in protest against the government's "
decretazo" (English: big decree), which cut unemployment benefits. However, in 1992 the Government scored a remarkable victory to its anti-terrorist policy thanks to French collaboration: the three highest leaders of ETA were arrested in the town of
Bidart, near the Spanish border.
The "legislature of tension" (1993-1996) results by province Surprisingly, in the
elections of June 1993 the PSOE won again and the People's Party of
José María Aznar - who was convinced of its victory - was defeated. According to Santos Julià, the key to the PSOE's unexpected triumph "was largely due to the leadership of Felipe González, who assured his voters that he had understood the 'message' and had himself supported, as number two in the Madrid candidacy, by
Baltasar Garzón, the judge who was most important for his investigations into the dirty war against ETA and the black money of
drug trafficking". However, the Socialists did not repeat the absolute majority they had held since 1982 - with 17 fewer deputies - therefore, to govern, Felipe González had to reach a parliamentary agreement with the Catalan and Basque nationalists - ruling out a pact with United Left, as some members of the "
guerrista" sector had insinuated. By contrast, the Socialist Government did reach consensus with the rest of the political forces and with the trade unions on the issue of pensions, which resulted in the agreement known as the
Toledo Pact in April 1995. However, the main problem that the socialist government of Felipe González had to face was the emergence of new scandals, resulting in a harsh confrontation with the opposition, both the Popular Party and United Left, thus the fourth socialist mandate came to be known as the "legislature of tension." In late 1993, the
Bank of Spain, backed by the Government, intervened the
Spanish Credit Bank, and its president
Mario Conde was removed from office. A year later, Conde was prosecuted for fraud and sent to prison. Another "shark" of finances,
Javier de la Rosa, was also arrested for swindling and embezzlement in the Gran Tibidabo company, and as Spanish representative of the Kuwaiti investment group
KIO. He was jailed in October 1994, leaving prison in February after paying a bail of 1 billion pesetas. Among the new scandals, the most spectacular and the one with the greatest popular and media impact was the "
Roldán case". In November 1993
Luis Roldán, the first non-military director of the Civil Guard in its history, was arrested, accused of having amassed a fortune thanks to the collection of illegal commissions from work contractors of the Benemérita and the appropriation of the reserved funds of the Ministry of the Interior. Four months later, in April 1994, Roldán fled. The former Minister of the Interior who appointed Roldán,
José Luis Corcuera, had to resign as a deputy, as did the Minister of the Interior at the time,
Antoni Asunción, for letting him escape. Another case of careerism within the PSOE was that of
Gabriel Urralburu, a former priest who became president of the Autonomous Community of Navarre, and who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for collecting commissions from construction companies that obtained public contracts. The 1994
European Parliament elections were held in this setting, and for the first time the Popular Party surpassed the PSOE in number of votes - obtaining 40% of the votes as opposed to 30% for the Socialists, leading to a demand for general elections, but Felipe González refused once he confirmed that he still had the support of
CiU. in 2005 A month before the European elections of June 1994, Judge Baltasar Garzón quit his position as a member of Congress and as Government Delegate for the National Plan on Drugs - apparently disappointed by the lack of political will of Felipe González to tackle corruption - and returned to the National Court. He then reopened the
GAL case and granted provisional release to policemen
José Amedo and Michel Domínguez who had been convicted in 1988 for their participation in several attacks attributed to the Antiterrorist Liberation Group, and who were willing to tell everything they knew once the Government did not approve their pardon, as they had been promised. Amedo and Domínguez's statements led to the arrest of several high-ranking officials of the Socialist administration for their alleged participation in the kidnapping and frustrated murder of the French citizen
Segundo Marey, mistaken for a member of ETA by a GAL commando. In December 1994, the civil governor of Vizcaya and director general of State Security during the first Socialist government
Julián Sancristóbal was arrested, followed by
Rafael Vera, former secretary of State for Security, and
Ricardo García Damborenea, secretary general of the Socialists of Vizcaya when Marey was kidnapped. Since the former Minister of the Interior
José Barrionuevo, a Socialist deputy, was also implicated, Garzón had to transfer the Marey case to the
Supreme Court, which immediately presented the request to the Cortes to prosecute him, which was granted by 159 votes in favor and 122 against. A new scandal emerged shortly after, known as the "
CESID papers" scandal and that would show, according to David Ruiz, the "unusual heights" reached by "the strategy of harassment of Felipe González' government." It was about the theft by the second chief of the
secret service, Colonel Juan Alberto Perote, of a series of documents that apparently implicated more socialist politicians in the "GAL case" and that Perote, according to the newspaper
El País, had delivered to
Mario Conde to blackmail the high authorities of the State to neutralize the legal actions taken against him and Javier de la Rosa. Part of the documents were transcripts of illegal wiretaps, forcing the Vice President Narcís Serra, Minister of Defense at the time of the wiretaps, and his successor in office,
Julián García Vargas, to resign. García Vargas also resigned for his alleged involvement in speculative actions on
Renfe land when he held the presidency of the railway company before being appointed Minister of Defense. In May 1995, the
municipal elections and autonomic elections were held, in a context defined by the attack perpetrated by ETA on April 20, from which the leader of the opposition, José María Aznar, miraculously escaped unharmed, and the arrest and surrender in
Laos of the fugitive
Luis Roldán. The victory was once again for the People's Party, which was almost 5 points ahead of the PSOE - it obtained 35.2% of the votes cast compared to 30.8% for the Socialists. Almost all the provincial capitals and the cities with the largest population became governed by the PP. Faced with a series of scandals, the leader of the CiU and president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, withdrew the parliamentary support of the CiU deputies to the Government, thus leaving the government as a minority in the Cortes. President Felipe González had no choice but to call an early general election.
Elections of 1996 results by province In the
general elections of 3 March 1996, the People's Party obtained 156 Congress deputies, while the PSOE was left with 141. The great disappointment of the electoral result was for United Left, that expected to come close to the PSOE, and even surpass it, but ended up with 21 deputies. The PP won the elections but not by the wide margin expected, beating the PSOE by only 300,000 votes - 9.7 million versus 9.4 million - and falling far short of the absolute majority of 176 deputies. Nevertheless, the PP achieved its goal of removing the Socialists from power, "after trying hard for more than a decade." Thus began the
governments of José María Aznar. == See also ==