TIMELINE: Zapatero as Spanish prime minister

(Reuters) - Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is hoping to achieve a second term as Spanish prime minister in a parliamentary election on Sunday.

A darkening economic outlook and the end of a housing boom have set the stage for a close race.

Here is a short chronology of events in Spain since 2004:

March 11, 2004 - Ten bombs kill 191 people and wound hundreds in simultaneous explosions on the Madrid railways.

March 12 - Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar links the Basque separatist group ETA to the attacks.

March 14 - A video tape purportedly from al Qaeda says it bombed the trains in retaliation for Spain's cooperation with U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies in the war in Iraq.

-- Spaniards throw out Aznar's centre-right government in a spectacular election upset. Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero becomes prime minister in April.

April 3 - Seven men including two suspected ringleaders of the bombings blow themselves up in an apartment in a suburb of Madrid as police close in. All are believed to be Arabs.

May 21 - The last Spanish troops leave Iraq. The pullout fulfils an election pledge by Zapatero, who opposed the Iraq war and branded the occupation "a fiasco".