Spanish Premier Elected to Unprecedented 4th Term : Politics: Gonzalez’s Socialists overcome a strong challenge. But they lose effective majority in Congress.

Confounding critics and pollsters alike, Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez held off a strong conservative challenge to win an unprecedented fourth term in Spanish national elections Sunday.

Gonzalez, 51, lost effective majority control of Parliament for the first time in more than a decade but consolidated the position of his Socialists as Spain’s dominant political force.

The conservative Popular Party led by 40-year-old Jose Maria Aznar dramatically improved its standing in Parliament but fell short of expectations.

Pre-election polls showed Gonzalez and Aznar running neck and neck in the closest national election since Spain returned to democracy in 1977 after four decades of Francoist dictatorship.

By early today, though, official returns had wiped out conservative dreams of ousting the durable Gonzalez, who was first elected in 1982 and returned to office in 1986 and 1989.

“Spanish democracy has won,” a beaming Gonzalez told supporters at a victory celebration in a downtown hotel, noting that the Socialists had drawn more votes than in 1986.

With 99% of the vote counted today, Gonzalez’s Socialists had 38.6% of the vote and a projected 159 seats in Parliament. Aznar’s Popular Party got 35% and 141 projected seats. About 77% of 31 million registered voters cast ballots.

Gonzalez went into the election with 175 seats for his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in the 350-member Parliament. The Popular Party won 107 seats in 1989 in Aznar’s debut as its leader.

A United Left movement dominated by unreformed Communists won 18 seats Sunday. Regional parties also maintained their important presence in the national Parliament. In all, a dozen parties will be represented in the new Parliament when it is sworn in later this month.

In a graceful concession speech early today, Aznar hailed his party’s “extraordinary performance” in narrowing the gap with the Socialists. The outcome “ended a decade of Socialist hegemony in Parliament,” Aznar said, promising to “continue promoting our idea of change, renovation and renewal.”

Gonzalez emerged from the election stronger than seemed likely during a rough-and-tumble 53-day campaign that featured Spain’s first televised debates between leaders of the two largest parties.

A week before the vote, polls showed a virtual tie, with the election in the hands of that 17% of Spaniards then still undecided.

Aznar, a onetime tax inspector and regional president, came out swinging, pressing Gonzalez in campaign stops and debates. After a decade of rapid growth climaxed by a yearlong fiesta commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage west, Spain is now mired in recession.

Attacking with fire and animus, Aznar held Gonzalez responsible for three devaluations of the peseta since September and for a 21.7% unemployment rate that has left 3.3 million workers off the job.

The Socialists have also been hurt by internal divisions and by Italian-style corruption scandals.

Gonzalez’s term did not expire until the fall, but he called early elections in what many observers saw as an attempt to limit the fallout of a recession that will get worse before it gets better.

In a campaign marked by mudslinging on both sides, Gonzalez branded the Popular Party a bastion of the privileged political right wing. It was an invitation to Spaniards to recall the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who died in 1975 after 36 hard-line years in power.