After the fireworks of Sunday’s general election, Spain’s victorious Socialists are sounding less euphoric and the defeated conservatives less despondent. The ruling socialists may have won more votes and more seats than four years ago, but voters did not give José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist leader and prime minister, the absolute majority he had asked for. His party will be seven deputies short of that goal in the 350-seat parliament.

“Zapatero has not been given a blank cheque,” says Francisco Longo, a professor at Barcelona’s Esade business school. “Spain will be more governable ... but Zapatero clearly must correct some of the mistakes of the first term.”