Zapatero May Bring Softer Sell to Spain

For Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the path to power can be traced to the last testament of his grandfather, a Spanish army captain executed by Gen. Francisco Franco’s fascist forces nearly 70 years ago during Spain’s civil war.

As the captain prepared to face a firing squad, he wrote a letter urging his family not to hate his killers. “He dies innocent and pardons,” the doomed Republican government supporter wrote of himself. “He asks his wife and sons to also pardon.”

Zapatero, now 43, “was 11 or 12 when he first saw that letter and it had a profound effect on him,” says Oscar Campillo, who wrote a sympathetic 2001 biography of the Socialist Workers Party leader who was elected prime minister of Spain on Sunday.

Zapatero’s belief in national reconciliation over revenge could serve him well with the Spanish public, which for years had been led by the confrontational Jose Maria Aznar.

Zapatero’s watchwords are “listen” and “dialogue,” and they come accompanied by his professed belief in seeking consensus. As opposition leader, Zapatero frequently proposed pacts with Aznar’s conservative government on issues such as fighting separatist terrorism in the Basque region. He has cast himself as a calm leader, capable of building consensus, touched by humility.

Aznar, by contrast, governed by imposing his will on his Popular Party and the country -- most notably by taking Spain into an American-led war in Iraq that more than 80% of Spaniards opposed.

The widespread opposition to the Iraq conflict explains why Zapatero’s tough talk on Monday against Washington is being regarded in Spain as nothing more than run-of-the-mill criticism.

“You can’t bombard a people just in case they pose a perceived threat,” Zapatero said, explaining why he was prepared to shake Spain’s close relationship to Washington by withdrawing troops from Iraq. “You can’t organize a war on the basis of lies.”

Bush, he suggested, should “engage in some self-criticism.”

It was hardly the exquisite civility Zapatero boasts about. But critics point out that, out of view of the international media, Zapatero used far more caustic language during the campaign to criticize the U.S. president.

“That’s the softest thing he’s said about Bush,” says Gustavo de Aristegui, the Popular Party’s foreign affairs spokesman in parliament who describes himself as “friendly” with the incoming prime minister. “He was actually being cautious.

“The U.S. is going to learn that Zapatero has soft manners, but he’s not as easygoing as he first looks.”

Spaniards themselves still have much to learn about their next prime minister. Although he has served in parliament for nearly 20 years, he has made only a limited impact on Spanish politics. Indeed, his public persona is so gentle that his nicknames range from “Bambi” to “Dull Man.”

Zapatero, who has never lost an election, was bitten by the political bug at 16 when his father took him to hear Socialist party leader Felipe Gonzalez address a rally in 1976. Though he was educated as a lawyer, politics became his profession.

He ran for parliament in 1986, winning a seat in the northwestern region of Leon, becoming the youngest member of parliament in Spain’s history. He regarded Gonzalez -- who governed the country from 1982 to 1996 -- as a mentor, mirroring his physical mannerisms, Campillo says.

“He is genuinely humble and modest and he has never done anything memorable in parliament, literally nothing,” said Charles Powell, an Anglo-Spanish historian in Madrid. “But he hadn’t offended anybody.”

His conciliatory manner was a helpful attribute when the Socialists went searching in 2000 for their third leader in three years after having lost national power, Powell said.

Zapatero won the leadership job but has struggled since to exert control over the party. The most damaging affair occurred last winter when Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, a Catalan nationalist and one of the Socialists’ political coalition partners, was found to have met with Basque insurgents. Zapatero’s failure to discipline Carod-Rovira for the incident was regarded by some as an egregious sign of what they believe is his weak leadership.

Few believed he would win Sunday’s election. One indication of his falling fortunes: Compillo’s publisher pulled Zapatero’s biography from print in May.

Zapatero had trailed in the polls for a year, and some in his own party were telling foreign diplomats even last week that the best they could hope for was to gain seats in the parliament.

But then came the Madrid terrorist bombings three days before the vote, which killed 201 people and wounded 1,500 commuters. Amid the collective grief and fury that followed, the Aznar government alienated many voters by initially blaming Basque terrorists and downplaying the possibility of an Al Qaeda link. The polls tipped in Zapatero’s favor.

He has since allowed himself a few broad grins in public but kept any euphoria under wraps. Spain’s public mood remains raw, and he was greeted upon arrival at party headquarters Sunday by a young crowd chanting “Don’t Let Us Down,” referring to his promise to bring the troops home.

“Power isn’t going to change me,” he vowed repeatedly throughout the campaign.

Agustin Sciammarella, the political cartoonist for Spain’s largest newspaper, says he draws “Zapatero with a shadowy part and a very clear part.”

“The clear part illustrates the clarity of his preelectoral message,” said the El Pais cartoonist. “The unknown future is the shadow.”

Special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas contributed to this report.