Rajoy's party colleagues hail performance of "future PM"

The Popular Party (PP) team is happy about the result of the televised debate between Mariano Rajoy and his Socialist opponent Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Rajoy, they said, was much more convincing because he supported all his statements with figures, whereas Rubalcaba merely speculated. The same sources said Rubalcaba addressed Rajoy as though the latter were already the new prime minister.

Other senior PP figures also expressed satisfaction at the way Rajoy handled himself. Murcia regional premier Ramón Luis Valcárcel said that Rajoy "rose to the challenge much more, and he remained in the realm of reality, more in touch with the demands and concerns of citizens than the Socialist candidate."

Valencian premier Alberto Fabra said that what he saw on television was "a good future prime minister and a not so good opposition spokesman. [...] Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba seemed nervous and more worried about what might happen to his party, as though admitting defeat."

Juan José Imbroda, the head of Melilla, a Spanish enclave in the north of Africa, greeted Rajoy on Tuesday with "What a whoopping you gave Rubalcaba!"

In an informal chat with journalists there, Rajoy said that his televised debate against Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba had lain bare "the Socialists' spent strategy of conjuring all the evils in hell," adding that the Socialists "should not govern again for a long while" because they have created five million unemployed Spaniards.