Socialists who OK'd gay marriage win Spanish election

Associated Press (AP)

Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero won re-election Sunday in a clear endorsement of a record of social change including the legalization of gay marriage and on-demand divorce, reforms once unthinkable in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Spain.

Zapatero also shifted Spanish foreign policy by pulling troops from Iraq in his first term, which he won three days after Islamic militants killed 191 people in a string of bombings against commuter trains.

Voters handed Zapatero his second term despite worries about a slumping economy, immigration and resurgent Basque separatists, blamed for gunning down a member of the prime minister's party on Friday — timing that recalled the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks.