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Mr. Zapatero, it seems, thinks that his country should have a sexual and social revolution.

Mr. Zapatero pledged in a television interview after the election to introduce legislation to put gay unions "on the same footing as marriage," even if he waffled a bit, adding, "Marriage is perhaps not the best word."

The Socialist Party electoral platform includes a proposal to change the abortion law to allow women to terminate their pregnancies in the first 12 weeks for any reason.

During his campaign, Mr. Zapatero emphasized the fact that Spanish women earn 25 percent less than men do for the same work, that Spain has one of the highest female unemployment rates in Europe and that only 10 percent of its business executives are women. He said that each year there were 50,000 reports of spousal abuse and that 500 women had died as "victims of gender violence" in the last eight years.

In a speech to Socialist leaders last Friday, he said that his administration will mark "the beginning of complete equality of the sexes, of the unceasing fight against criminal machismo."

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Spain's Socialist prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is planning to govern with a 16-member cabinet split equally between men and women, Spanish radio reported on Wednesday.

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This year they have 126 women deputies, 36%, putting Spain into 7th place.

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Barcelona declared its opposition to bullfighting yesterday, the first big Spanish city to take a decision which animal rights campaigners welcomed as a step towards getting it banned in at least part of the country.
City councillors carried the motion in a secret ballot, a spokesman said.

Although the vote has no practical effect, and bullfights will continue at the Monumental bullring, it will put pressure on the Catalan regional government to ban what many people consider an emblematic Spanish tradition.

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More than 25 years after Spain stepped out of Franco's shadow, one vestige of authoritarianism lives on here: every democratically elected administration since the late 1970's has used the government-owned television network, TVE, as a mouthpiece for its propaganda.

Spain's new Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has vowed to be different.

During his election campaign this year, he promised to create a committee of experts to study the problem.

Last month, he did just that, giving five independent worthies until early next year to make recommendations on the structure, financing and autonomy of public broadcasting. Their report, he said, will then be translated into law.

"For the first time in 24 years, the winner of an election has made a solemn and reiterated commitment to end political exploitation of TVE by the ruling party," said Jesús Ceberio, editor of the left-of-center daily El País. "This is new."

The question now is what the experts will propose. They are already receiving advice - to create an independent board, to introduce license fees, to privatize one channel, to stop competing with commercial television for advertising - and warnings - that TVE's unions will fight moves to shrink its 8,000-strong labor force.

"To improve public television will be harder than getting Spanish troops out of Iraq," noted José Antonio Martínez Soler, a former TVE anchor who was fired by Mr. Aznar and now publishes "20 Minutos," a newspaper distributed free here.

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It's not the first time Spaniards were lied to by fascists. General Franco tried to blame the nazis bombing of Guernica on fleeing Basque socialists in 1937. Spaniards were ordered not to talk about the events at Guernica, but Pablo Picasso travelled from Paris to immortalize the image of Guernica in ruins with a figure in his painting raising their fist against the nazi Luftwaffe air attack. The Basque's would again be blamed for another lie, and this time it would be the Madrid train bombing of 3-11-04.

Spaniards were also dissatisfied with the fact that they earned the lowest average incomes among EU nations with the conservative Popular party at the helm.

Picasso's painting has outlived the fascist lies of 1937 to this day.

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The bright-eyed lawyer and career politician whose apparent naiveté prompted critics to call him "Bambi" has pursued his leftist agenda with a determination that belies his polite demeanor and soft outer shell. Zapatero bills himself as the politician of dialogue, consensus, and plurality.

"He's a very courageous person but also a very sensitive one."

Zapatero's supporters say he has held up a mirror to modern Spain, pushing social reforms that expand the rights of minority groups: legalizing gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, devolving power to the regions and promoting a law intended to help cure the wounds of the Franco era.

His critics say he is hostage to the whim of radical minorities and nationalists, and has tinkered dangerously with the territorial integrity of Spain and set the country on a collision course with the Catholic Church.

Zapatero became the youngest Socialist deputy at the age of 26 and has worked for the party ever since.

Tall, thin and well-dressed, Zapatero has a calm, friendly manner and deep, sonorous voice that offset his image as wide-eyed and awkward.

While liberals and minority groups find Zapatero's sunny outlook inspiring, skeptics view him as cloistered and naïve. His credibility hit a low point in December 2006 when, less than 24 hours after giving an upbeat assessment of progress in talks with the Basque militant organization ETA, the group set off a huge bomb at a Madrid airport, killing two.

Zapatero pulled Spain's troops out of Iraq soon after taking power in April 2004 and has rejected calls for Spain to play a bigger role in Afghanistan.

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Originally posted by BetterRed:
But Zapatero is not a president of Spain.
He's the Prime Minister...

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In theory, the president of Spain is not a president at all. Spain is a constututional monarchy, the King is the Head of State and has to approve the appointment of the head of government who, in other constitutional monarchies, would be referred to as prime minister.

However, the Spanish constitution refers to the leader of government as president, and so do Spaniards, Spanish media and protocol. All leaders of Spain's regional autonomies are known as "presidents" too.

Whatever the reason, although José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is often called "prime minister" by foreign media, within his own country he is known as the President of Spain or Presidente del Gobierno.

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