Bearded Wonders And Robot Presidents

President Zapatero, he of the many nicknames, is often referred to as ZP. It makes him sound like a micro-chip, which is about right seeing as how he is the first fully automated political leader in western Europe. The ZP has been inserted into his motherboard, so he has now become Z-3PO, waving its arms around and screaming "reformas, reformas, reformas". The Z-3PO was recently interviewed by the "Financial Times". In the video, one can see it beaming. The original model always beamed a lot, more in confusion than simple affability. The robotic, automated version, now sensing an end to its political career, is beaming at the prospect of retirement, receiving its ex-presidential salary and writing its memoirs.

There is another reason for all the beaming. Astonishingly enough, Spain is groping its way out of recession, and Zapatero is getting the plaudits. The German "iron lady", Angela Merkel, has been praising his efforts, thus also bolstering her fellow countrymen who do, after all, either own much of Spain or wish to sell even more of it to even more of these fellow countrymen. When pressed on quite how this miracle of recovery has come to pass, the Z-3PO is plugged in, beams a lot, and goes off on the "reformas" chant that has been programmed into its circuits.

The Z-3PO is driven by an operating system known as "New Labour". This makes it and the party it heads, the PSOE new model non-ideologues, lean ever further away from any socialist roots. The Z-3PO, fashioned after Tony, smooth-faced, grinning, exaggerated hand movements and any policy it fancies, has taken the party so far towards the centre or in the opposite direction to that which it historically had, that it has been able to more or less tame the ogres of the unions. It may not have been a Scargill or a Clause 4 moment, but the air-traffic controllers' strike was something of a turning-point. Even the barely reconstructed Commies of the CCOO union disapproved of their action (though admittedly they didn't much care for the packet that the controllers were receiving.)

Taming the unions and changing labour law are crucial elements to all the "reformas". And remarkably the unions seem prepared to go along with them, given that they have been cast, for the purposes of public consumption, in the role of pantomime villains, as opposed to those in the banking and finance sectors who should be.

The Z-3PO is quite happy with this. It will be de-commissioned in 2012, which will be something of a pity as it is at least the embodiment, as it were, of a modern political leader: wires and circuit-boards in the right place and increasingly further to the right, a clone of Blair and no facial hair. And this last bit is important.

The leadership of the new model PSOE is likely to pass to one Alfredo Rubalcaba, the beardy vice-president who bears an unnerving resemblance to Solzhenitsyn. He will be up against another beardy, the Partido Popular's Mariano Rajoy - Mr. Grey - who succeeds in making the normally uncharismatic world of Spanish politics seem positively magnetic. Even the robotic Zapatero is full of life by comparison. What a choice faces Spain. Mr. Grey or the Gulag.

Despite having a massive lead in the polls, the Partido Popular faces a problem. Mr. Grey. We have WikiLeaks to thank for knowing that his predecessor, the little accountant José Maria Aznar, had reservations about Rajoy. A lot of people did, and still do. It seems no coincidence that, at what has been a critical period for Spain, Rajoy has been hardly anywhere to be seen. But Aznar has. He has re-emerged, minus, in proper contemporary manner, his old moustache and with his hair even darker than it became during his time as president, so much so that his head is like a Bertie Bassett's, with a thick layer of liquorice on top.

The re-appearance of the lush Aznar barnet is a reminder of a time when a Spanish leader did command some international kudos. Zapatero has just about managed to acquire some of his own. He may have performed an almost complete about-turn on most things, except his praiseworthy and liberal social reforms, but he seems to be restoring some Spanish credibility. It may have all required him being re-programmed, but he has retained, amidst all the "reformas", an affability. It is not one that could be said to be shared by Rajoy, the likely next president, a zomboid, and bearded, Borg.


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