Madrid  - Representatives of Spain's black community Wednesday hailed US president-elect Barack Obama's victory as changing the perception the world had of black people.

"This totally changes the vision" that people have of "the capacity of the black community," said Luis Alberto Alarcon, an Afro-Colombian activist who lives in Madrid.

Obama's election as US president proved that blacks could reach the highest levels whenever "the political context allows them to move forward," Alarcon, who heads the Spanish section of the ecologist Life Foundation, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Antumi Toasije, president of the Pan-Africanist organization Centro Panafricano, welcomed Obama's triumph as a "moral victory."

"This debunks the idea that the United States is the most racist country in the world," Toasije told dpa, stressing that blacks still lacked for sufficient representation in European power structures.

Toasije and Alarcon estimated the number of Latin American descendants of Africans at 120 million. Hundreds of thousands of them live in Spain, which also has hundreds of thousands of Africans, they said.

Hundreds of Americans and Spaniards celebrated Obama's victory overnight at a Madrid arts centre, while Republican candidate John McCain's supporters staged their own party.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero meanwhile sent a congratulating telegram to Obama, saying his victory was based on "a message of unity, joyful hope and solidarity."

"It is a triumph that opens a road of hope and trust for the world in moments of difficulty and uncertainty," Zapatero said.

Spanish political parties agreed that Obama's victory opened an opportunity for Spain to improve its relations with the US, which worsened after Zapatero recalled Spanish troops from Iraq following his election victory in 2004.

Obama would open a "new era" in international relations, giving a push to dialogue and multilateralism, government sources quoted Zapatero as saying.

Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos expressed trust that Obama would soon receive Zapatero, in contrast with George W Bush, who did not meet bilaterally with the Spanish premier. (dpa)