MADRID (Reuters) ? Spain's likely new leader, center-rightist Mariano Rajoy, pleaded with financial markets on Friday for breathing room to start tackling the country's economic crisis if he wins power in a parliamentary election this weekend.
Opinion polls before Sunday's election show the People's Party (PP), led by Rajoy, has a double digit lead over the ruling Socialists, widely seen by Spaniards as having mishandled the response to the growing euro zone debt crisis.
"We hope ... they realize that there are elections here and those that win have the right to a minimum of time, preferably more than half an hour," he said in a radio interview.
Spain is set to become the latest precarious euro zone country to replace its leadership, following Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal.
The euro zone's fourth largest economy sold 10-year government bonds on Thursday with a yield of almost 7 percent. That high a borrowing cost has forced other euro zone countries to resort to international bailouts.
Economic problems have dominated the election campaign, with more than one in five workers out of a job, a recession looming and the government's borrowing costs soaring.
Rajoy, a cautious former interior minister, will not be sworn in as prime minister until around December 20 if he wins as expected. But before that he is expected to try to calm the markets by laying out details of how he will shrink the public deficit and reform the economy.
The Spanish stock market closed higher on the last day of trade before the election, compared with falls in London, Frankfurt and Paris.
"The market is rising partly because of a technical rebound and also because we are expecting the PP to win an absolute majority in the general election on Sunday," said Javier Galan, fund manager at Renta 4.
Rajoy is expected to name economic heavyweights to his cabinet and implement tax cuts immediately for small companies that hire staff as he races against the clock to win market confidence in the new government.
BAIL-OUT OUT OF QUESTION
However, investors' concerns about European government debt have spread to Italy and France, which means that unless the euro common currency area comes up with a big picture solution, Rajoy may not be able to save Spain from a meltdown.
Economy Minister Elena Salgado put a brave face on matters on Friday, saying Spain was able to meet its funding needs and yields on its sovereign debt did not reflect economic reality.
"Asking for a rescue is totally out of the question," she told a weekly news conference.
The Socialists chose veteran politician Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba as their leader for the campaign after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero decided against running for a third term due to his flagging popularity.
Rubalcaba spent the last week of the campaign trying to get out the Socialist vote, not to win, but to prevent the PP taking an absolute majority in Parliament.
"I'm worried that the Right takes over with absolute power," he said in an interview in Friday's El Pais newspaper.
Spain's economic trouble dates from after it joined the euro in 1999 and a flood of cheap credit led to a housing and building glut. When the property market crashed in 2007 the government, companies and consumers all found themselves over their heads in debt.
Spanish austerity measures, along with bail-outs and forced recapitalization of banks, have succeeded so far in keeping the country from an international rescue.
But they have also aggravated unemployment. No one in 1.4 million Spanish households has a formal job, and consumer groups say a million homeowners are at risk of having their property seized by the bank.
"In this situation you've got to vote for a change of government to see if they can turn the situation around. In almost every Spanish family there are people in trouble," said Manolo, 61, a retired driving instructor standing outside an unemployment office in Madrid.
Inside, his daughter, an out-of-work social worker, lined up for benefits.
(Additional reporting by Sonya Dowsett and Jesus Aguado; Editing by Angus MacSwan and David Stamp)
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