Spain eagerly watches for change from U.S.

MADRID (Spain) -- Even by late-night Spanish standards - where most restaurants don't open for dinner before 9 p.m. - the U.S. election debates were very late, starting at 3 a.m. Madrid time (9 p.m. New York).

Yet three Spanish television networks carried the debates live at that hour, translated into Spanish, and for the first one between Barack Obama and John McCain, a surprising 350,000 Spaniards stayed up to watch it, according to the TNS ratings service here.

The next two debates -- vice-presidential and second presidential -- had more than 200,000 viewers each, more than a fourth of overnight viewers here.

Why?

Many Spaniards sense a change in Washington, and a possible new opening after the cool relations between the Bush administration and the Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

He withdrew Spain's troops from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq shortly after taking office in 2004, which upset Washington.

Zapatero has pledged publicly to work with Obama or McCain, saying that the United States is a key ally for Spain.

But only Obama has publicly pledged, if he wins, to meet with Zapatero.

McCain made a lot of news in Spain -- and in the United States -- when he declined during a radio interview, on several occasions, to commit to such a meeting, saying only he would meet with Washington's friends and allies.

That controversy led to Spain being mentioned explicitly in the first two debates -- first Obama, and then his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, chiding McCain for not committing to a meeting with the prime minister of Spain, a NATO ally which has troops in Afghanistan.