Is Spanish national pride more important than Zapatero bashing?

| 09-01-2010 | Spanish Culture | Written by Matthew Bennett | 1 comment

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Britain’s financial press – with the FT and the Economist leading the way – has achieved something Spanish politicians haven’t managed since the start of the recession: to bring the Spanish media almost together in defence of Zapatero.

The BBC has also joined in the fun, with Europe editor Gavin Hewitt writing on his blog:

“It may be that, with nearly four million Spanish workers without jobs, Prime Minister Zapatero prefers to turn the economic debate into a push for more European regulation. Others are likely to submit different questions in this grand 2020 strategy debate. How are jobs created? “

A question everyone in Spain knows Zapatero is incapable of answering for Spain, let alone the whole of Europe.

Are we discovering something more valuable to the Spanish press and the Spanish right than Zapatero-bashing?

Could it be that the editors of Spain’s newspapers and conservative political leaders in Spain feel it more important to defend Zapatero against foreign criticism than to continue rounding on him for his pathetic performance as Prime Minister during this recession?

Or have they heeded Zapatero’s call for the Spanish media to be more patriotic when Spain is playing abroad, regardless of who the captain is?

Or is it just a bit of historical Brit-bashing by some Spanish journalists – undergound tension surfacing over touchy subjects like Gibraltar and the image of Spain abroad?

The only other time I remember this happening was when Hugo Chávez waffled for too long at the Ibero-American summit in 2007, causing Spanish King Juan Carlos to undiplomatically interrupt the Venezuelan leader with a phrase that became an instant hit among Spaniards: “Why don’t you just shut up? “

It even became a mobile phone ring tone. Zapatero had defended the political honour of former Popular Party Prime Minsiter José María Aznar against accusations of facism by Chávez.

When Zapatero puts his foot in it by himself – like when he tried to hide the photo of his daughters before dinner with the Obamas in New York last September , the Spanish press has been almost universally critical of Zapatero.

And even El País rounded on him after the summer, all but calling for the sort of internal political coup that Gordon Brown has become so adept at avoiding in the UK since he became Prime Minister. Brown and Zapatero also share Mr. Bean as their alter-ego.

Seen as he has just become President of Europe – and therefore of all Europeans – in the middle of a recession, and with Spain in such a shocking state economically, I agree with Vicente Lozano in Expansión: the criticism is more than justified in this case.

On the day when the European unemployment rate has risen above 10% for the first time since the recession began – and with the official Spanish rate very nearly 20% – we also learn that Captain Zapatero has taken the serious criticism to heart and commissioned a TV production company to film him as he makes his way around Brussels.

Is that the reaction of a Spanish Prime Minister & EU President more worried about his image or about getting Europe back on the road to sustainable economic growth?

Does anyone – in Spain, the UK or Europe – really expect to be reading the following headline in June: “Zapatero turns Europe round in six months: EU unemployment falls“?