High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Legislative elections were held in Spain on 14 March, 2004. At stake were all 350 seats in the lower house of the Cortes Generales, the Congress of Deputies, and 208 seats in upper house, the Senate. The governing People's Party was led into the campaign by Mariano Rajoy, successor to outgoing Prime Minister José María Aznar. In a result which defied most predictions, the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, won a plurality of seats in Congress of Deputies, and was able to form a government with the support of minor parties. The socialists received more votes than expected as a result of the government's handling of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings.