Opposition Socialists won Spain's general election on Sunday, three days after the deadly Madrid train bombings which killed 200 people and wounded 1,400 others. 

The ruling Popular Party (PP) conceded defeat to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, leader of the Spanish Socialist Party.

Zapatero will take over from outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who is a staunch supporter of the US-led Iraq war which most Spaniards opposed.

With at least 94 percent of the votes counted, the Socialists grabbed 163 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies, while the ruling Popular Party only managed to get 149 seats.

More than 34 million Spanish citizens, many of whom wore the black ribbon symbol of national grief since Thursday's attack, participated in Sunday's election.

Zapatero voiced his satisfaction over his party's return to power after eight years.

"We must celebrate the victory of the Spanish people, the victory of democracy," he said.

Saying that "my most immediate priority is to fight every form of terrorism," he announced that his first initiative Monday would be to call for "the unity of political forces to concentrate all the efforts" on fighting terrorism.

"Terrorism must know that it will find us all in front and together, we will defeat it," he declared.

Zapatero also pledged to foster the prestige of the democratic institutions and to take the country to the first line of the European Union (EU), always under the lead of its own constitution.

The PP leader and presidential candidate Mariano Rajoy conceded Sunday his party's electoral defeat.

Rajoy said people's participation in the polls had been democratic and eloquent as well as an answer to the barbaric train bombings.

He also thanked millions of Spaniards who voted for his party and recognized its efforts in a campaign "tragically interrupted" by the train bombings.

Rajoy also declared that Spain is a great nation and thus its citizens could face future challenges and maintain their unity around the constitution.

"We abandon the government with clean hands and leaving the accounts clear and in order," he added.

In the previous general elections held in March 2000 with Joaquin Almunia as the presidential candidate, the Socialists were bitterly defeated as they obtained only 125 seats.

The results led to Almunia's irrevocable resignation from the leadership of the party the same night of the polls.

From its success in general elections in October 1982 to its defeat in the hands of the PP in 1996, the Socialist Party ruled in its first two terms with an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies but with a relative majority in the following two mandates.

In 1986, the Socialists got nearly 9 million votes and an absolute majority in the congress with 184 seats.

In 1989, they again won more than 8 million votes or nearly 40 percent of the support and thus held the congressional majority with 175 representatives.

In 1993, with Felipe Gonzalez as the presidential candidate, they won for the fourth time in a row with more than 9 million votes, equivalent to 38.78 percent of the ballots, and 159 seats in the congress.

In the March 2000 elections, with Jose Maria Aznar as the presidential candidate, the PP obtained its first absolute majority in the congress with more than 10 million votes, or 44.5 percent of the total, and 183 seats in the congress. 

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2004)