Zapatero swipes at PP's "failed" Valencia policies

After a 24-hour truce due to the earthquake disaster in Lorca, Friday's campaigning for the May 22 local and regional elections saw Spain's national leaders taking aim at each others' credibility once more.

On Saturday, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was scheduled to appear at a Socialist rally in Valencia, with a speech focusing on the alleged failure of the economic model in a region that is currently run by the opposition Popular Party (PP).

Government sources said that Zapatero will highlight speculation, unbridled construction, high debt levels and low investment in research in the Valencian region, whose premier Francisco Camps faces corruption accusations in connection with a kickbacks-for-contracts scheme known as the Gürtel case.

Zapatero will say that PP leader Mariano Rajoy's "unknown recipes" against the economic crisis are already being implemented in Valencia, government sources said.

Meanwhile, Rajoy on Friday compared Spain with Greece and Portugal- countries that required a financial bailout- and said that Zapatero's government was responsible for the continued crisis in this country. "This is the government that impoverished Spaniards the most and left more people jobless in our entire democratic history," he said in Vitoria.

Using recent Eurostat figures, Rajoy also wondered why Germany is growing five times more than Spain. "Germany is doing well, but it is ruled by the European Popular Party. Greece is run by the Socialists, and so is Portugal."

Despite the Socialists' focus on the opposition's corruption scandals, surveys show that the PP could win back the Balearic Islands on May 22, despite a slew of trials against members of the PP government under Jaume Matas, who left politics in 2007.