He noted that the Socialists had picked up votes since last year's European elections

He noted that the Socialists had picked up votes since last year's European elections. "We will continue fighting," a smiling Mr Gonzalez said, "with the will to win the next elections which will be in 1997."The PP has not, so far, repeated its demand of recent months that Mr Gonzalez should call an early general election. They feel the PP has little to offer them and may even take away the gains they have won.Socialists probably also held on to the votes of a substantial sector of the middle classes who fear that behind the smooth moderation of the PP campaign lie many old hardliners with only a tenuous loyalty to democracy who are quietly biding time.The Prime Minister appeared late on Sunday at his party's headquarters to congratulate the PP on its victory. The PP has made strong inroads among the urban middle class and the young - those sectors most disenchanted with the sluggish economy and the sleaze surrounding Mr Gonzalez and his ministers.But the PSOE held its bedrock of support among the poor and the elderly, who owe the palpable improvement in their lives to 13 years of Socialist government. ''This is only the first step: the next one will be the government of Spain.''For the governing Socialists, the result was, in the words of a front- page editorial in El Pais newspaper, a simple defeat rather than the total collapse they had feared. The PP likened its takeover of the town halls to that achieved by the Socialists in 1979 - which was the launchpad for the Socialist election landslide of 1982.Addressing thousands of euphoric supporters outside his party's Madrid headquarters on Sunday night, Mr Aznar said the results showed people's longing for a change. Opinion polls consistently underplayed its importance in small towns, where a conservative campaign for change and renewal exerted little appeal.The Socialists held on to two rural strongholds, the regions of Extremadura, bordering Portugal, where they will need the support of the pro-Communist United Left party to rule, and in Castile- La Mancha in the central plains, where they held their absolute majority.The Socialists also held the municipal jewel in their crown, the city of Barcelona, in an evenly matched contest with Catalan nationalists, and kept their absolute majority in the north-western port of La Coruna.The PP leader, Jose Maria Aznar, hailed the result as "a sweeping triumph".

In autonomous regions, 10 of the 13 that voted put the PP first, and five gave it an outright majority. Socialists remain in control of only two of the 13, compared with the eight they had held previously.However, the Socialists' vote, at 31.5 per cent, held up better than expected. It is the first time the right has won democratic elections so comprehensively, and the results point strongly towards a victory for the PP, which has never been in government, in general elections due in 1997.With 35 per cent of the vote, the PP won more than 40 of the 50 provincial capitals, 32 of them with an absolute majority. FROM ELIZABETH NASH in Madrid Spain's conservative opposition People's Party (PP) won a decisive victory in elections for regions and town halls on Sunday, causing a severe setback for the Socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez and transforming the political map.The tortilla has been turned over, as they say here, and the PP has established itself as the principal force in the main centres of power in Spanish politics: the big cities and the regional governments. Any evidence of racism, they say, will be punished.Nevertheless the incident has shocked Paris because it seemed to prove that police racism is still a problem and that anti-police feeling is far closer to the surface than the authorities thought..

By all accounts, quiet returned as soon as the police left, and the police have announced an inquiry. A full-scale riot ensued - 80 police against 300 or so locals - in which three people were slightly injured.The police say they spotted known agitators in the crowd, who instigated the violence. Either he refused, or did not have his papers; the police made to take him away.It is alleged that one of the policemen then called the youth ''a dirty Jew'', and subjected his father - who had run over from the pre- Sabbath market near by - to the same treatment. At that, it is said, market stall-holders (mostly Jews), shoppers and bystanders (mostly Arabs), came to the support of the youth, and surrounded the police and their car.The police called for help, and a busload of reinforcements arrived. One of those asked for his documents was a youth of 16, ferreting about under the bonnet of a car. With its small pastel houses and quiet narrow streets, it is like Montmartre used to be.

It has been sought out as a last refuge of Bohemia by writers and artists looking for ''real life''. It has a large student and young population, and first-generation immigrants: Jews and Arabs from the Maghreb, Turks, Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodians.According to the police, the level of street crime is no worse than anywhere else in Paris. Any racial tension tends to be between North Africans and Orientals, not between Jews and Arabs or between any of these groups and the police.Last Friday, though, for reasons not fully explained, a special police unit went to Belleville and started checking identity papers. And although accounts of events in Belleville last Friday vary widely, there is agreement on one thing: Arabs and Jews were ranged side by side against the Paris police.Belleville is an old, picturesque quarter of Paris, one of the few areas close to the centre that has not been gentrified. Such a demonstration would be nothing unusual in the rundown Sixties suburbs outside the ring road around the capital; nor would the sort of incident - usually a request for identity papers - that gives rise to them.But the episode that provoked this demonstration was unusual on two counts: it took place inside the city, and the charges of racism came not from the usual complainants, Turks or North African Arabs, but from Sephardic Jews, relatively recent immigrants, mainly from Tunisia. FROM MARY DEJEVSKY in Paris Several hundred people turned out in the Belleville district of north- eastern Paris yesterday evening to demonstrate against what they say is police racism. But it was Neftegorsk, close to the epicentre, that took the brunt..