Simon Tisdall

Spain’s voters have sent a series of dramatic messages that will resonate far beyond Spain, affecting relations within Europe, with the US and in terms of the ``war on terror’’. They reminded the world that regime change is best achieved through the ballot box; and that violence must not be allowed to win. Sunday’s high poll turnout, after the mass demonstrations last Friday, reflected participatory democracy at its best - courageous, robust and unintimidated.

They also served a warning that politicians who flout public opinion, as the outgoing prime minister Jose Maria Aznar did over Iraq, may pay a heavy price.

The bombs were a brutal reminder of that unpopular war. Many in Spain and more widely, in Europe, saw them as the Islamist terrorists’ long predicted payback - and a direct result of Aznar’s stance. Voters also objected strongly to perceived attempts by the People’s party to manipulate or ``spin” opinion over whether Eta or terrorists linked to al-Qaida were responsible for the bombings.

Such messages will send a quiet shiver through Tony Blair’s office in Downing Street, London, and George Bush’s White House. Both incumbents are facing elections in the not too distant

future; both still struggle to justify their Iraq policy and the conduct of the war on terror; and both lead people who now wonder whether their trains, planes, and citizens will be next.

The abrupt change of government in Spain will alter the balance of power within the EU and between what US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld described as the ``old” and ``new” Europe. In Aznar, Blair and Bush have lost a key partner; in Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s Socialist prime minister-designate, France and Germany may have gained one.

The untried Zapatero is in effect a wild card whose policies could impact unpredictably on issues ranging from the EU constitution to the Middle East and Gibraltar.

Little wonder perhaps that the Polish government on Monday publicly regretted

Aznar’s defeat. Warsaw’s military links with Spain in Iraq, and more broadly in terms

of its political aspirations and objectives within the EU, are now inevitably thrown into some doubt.

One effect of Zapatero’s victory may be to reduce the impetus for post-Iraq fence-mending with Washington by Paris and Berlin. Jacques Chirac’s France has pursued a truce of expediency since the UN security council ructions a year ago. But the fundamental French objection to what it sees as hegemonistic US tendencies, not least in respect of the war on terror, is unchanged. The prime minister-designate’s renewed vow to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq potentially blows a gaping hole in the west’s anti-terrorist front. If enacted, it will be seen in the Muslim world as a success for Islamist extremist violence.

Given the key importance afforded Iraq in the war on terror, Zapatero’s declaration that ``the [Iraq] war has been a disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster’’ is profoundly dismaying for Washington and London. This change could be of greater significance given the fact that, on the face of it, Spain’s March 11 amounted to another dreadful intelligence failure.

March 11 in Madrid has provided other lessons, too. Uncontrolled events have once again exposed the illusion that any number of officially imposed security measures — from plain-clothes police on the tube to sky marshals , draconian anti-terrorism laws and military campaigns — can stop a Madrid happening again, anywhere, any time. — The Guardian, London