Polls opened today in two Spanish regions that will give the Socialist government its first electoral test since the economy slipped into recession late last year and unemployment rose sharply.
Prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is hoping his party will keep control of northwestern Galicia and unseat nationalists who have held power for 29 years in the northeastern Basque country.
Mr Zapatero's Socialists won national re-election in March last year when the economy was cooling as a decade-long housing boom ended. Unemployment has since jumped to 14 per cent and the economy has gone into recession.
Socialist campaigning has also suffered from a row over a justice minister, who resigned on Monday after news he had been hunting with a high-profile judge heading a corruption probe in which members of the leading opposition party are implicated.
But analysts say the inquiry also helps explain why the Socialists have maintained a lead in opinion polls over the conservative Popular Party (PP) despite the recession.
PP leader Mariano Rajoy also has a lot at stake and has campaigned energetically in Galicia for his party to return to power. Mr Rajoy struggled to retain leadership of the PP after he lost a second national election last year and analysts say he has failed to capitalise on discontent over the recession.
Both leaders have called for voters to turn out and make a difference where opinion polls show no clear winners. "Every vote may be worth a government," Mr Zapatero said at one rally, while Mr Rajoy urged "effort, work and sacrifice" from voters.
Opinion polls published in newspapers last weekend were divided over whether the Socialist-led coalition could win re-election in Galicia or lose to a PP majority.
In the Basque country, polls show no party winning a clear majority. Socialist support has surged amongst Basques tired of four decades of political violence, but to govern they may have to reach agreement with their bitter rivals, the PP.
Violence has often been on the fringes of Basque politics and suspected ETA rebels planted a bomb at a regional Socialist office on Monday. Another suspected ETA bomb exploded in Madrid last month after the Supreme Court banned two parties from running in today's polls for links to the armed separatists.
On Friday, an ETA statement said the elections were "anti-democratic" for excluding the left-wing pro-independence parties. An armed campaign by ETA over 40 years to carve out an independent Basque homeland has killed more than 800 people.
Reuters