Politics

Spain's Socialists chose party veteran Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba as their new leader on Saturday, charging him with mending divisions and rebuilding the party just months after he suffered a crushing defeat in a general election.

Rubalcaba captured a sliver over 50 percent of delegates' votes at a party convention in the southern city of Seville, beating Carme Chacon, a 40-year-old former defence minister who had cast herself as a party reformer.

Rubalcaba is a former deputy prime minister and interior minister and replaces Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who, battered by economic crisis and sky-high unemployment, stood aside to let Rubalcaba stand as the party's candidate in November's election.

However, the 60-year-old had trouble distancing himself from Zapatero, prime minister from 2004 to 2011, and the centre-right People's Party (PP) won an absolute majority in parliament. The PP, under Mariano Rajoy, also controls most of the country's autonomous regions and all of the big cities.

Rubalcaba's first challenge will be to retain Socialist control of Andalucia, the populous southern region with one of Spain's highest jobless rates. Polls show the PP will comfortably win that vote on March 25.

Four milllion voters abandoned the Socialists at the last election, many of them angry young people, almost half whom are jobless. "We had a serious defeat ... those millions who have left the party are outside listening and we have to tell them, those young people who fear terribly for their future, we have to give them answers," Rubalcaba said in his acceptance speech.

The near 50-50 vote has raised concerns of a party split, and Zapatero urged delegates on Friday to fully back whoever was the winner to help the party to rebuild.

Since it won power, the PP has deepened austerity measures begun by the Socialists and has also signalled a roll back of Socialist measures on abortion and gay marriage.