TELEVISION has been a key factor in recent Spanish elections and it has usually favoured the media friendly, modernising Socialists (PSOE). The current general election campaign has been no exception but this time the PSOE has made three successive TV blunders, culminating yesterday in a spectacular humiliation for the Prime Minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez.
The central election committee, a body which adjudicates on disputes between the political parties, decided early yesterday to instruct the head of Spanish television (RTVE) not to broadcast an interview with Mr Gonzalez tomorrow night. Earlier, the RTVE executive had a tied vote Ion the issue, with members voting on predictable party lines.
The PSOE wanted Mr Gonzalez to have literally the last words of the campaign, as electioneering is forbidden here on Saturday the "day of reflection" which precedes the vote. Given that Mr Gonzalez is much more popular than his own party (and more liked and respected than his opposite number in the right wing Partido Popular (PP), Mr Jose Maria Aznar), the advantage would have been considerable.
Both the PP and the communist led Izquierda Unida (IU) protested furiously against what they considered "an abuse of power without precedent in our political life", and the election committee upheld their case. The interview with Mr Gonzalez will now be broadcast tonight the same night as that with Mr Aznar, his likely successor.
The PSOE's first TV cock up was its refusal to go ahead with a three way debate between Mr Gonzalez, Mr Aznar and the IU leader, Mr Julio Anguita. The PSOE argued that the other two, despite their differences, would gang up to Mr Gonzalez's disadvantage, and held out for a one to one with Mr Aznar.
Painfully aware that such a confrontation contributed heavily to his defeat in 1993, Mr Aznar insisted on a threesome. Neither debate will now take place.
In retrospect, the PSOE ruefully recognises that a three way TV encounter would have benefited its candidate more than no debate. The Socialists merely looked petulant, while Mr Aznar was able to argue that he was being democratic by demanding the inclusion of his communist opponent.
Almost as bad was the PSOE's production of a video which used subliminal images, illegal in ordinary advertising, which associated PP leaders with fascism, snarling dogs and even nuclear war. The video, which Mr Gonzalez claims not to have seen, brought down a torrent of negative publicity.
In a campaign where perceptions are far more important than policies, any one of these blunders would be seriously damaging. Taken together, they must constitute an almost insuperable barrier to the PSOE repeating its 1993 comeback, when it snatched victory from an over confident PP at the last minute.
Meanwhile, at lunchtime on Tuesday, before the electoral committee had met, Mr Gonzalez gave a curiously valedictory address to a gathering of cultural figures in Madrid's Circulo de Bellas Artas.
In an unusually frank admission that his last three years as Prime Minister have sorely tested his supporters, he thanked the assembled actors, intellectuals, painters and musicians for sticking by him and the PSOE through scandal after scandal. He acknowledged that, if he loses on Sunday, it will be because of his failure to deal quickly with corruption among his ministers and officials.
That, and the clumsiest media campaign in the PSOE's history.