Al día siguiente de las elecciones lo resumieron perfectamente en el nyt. Donde no hay no se puede sacar...
Mr. Zapatero is the son of a lawyer and grandson of a Republican army officer killed by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. He was born in the Castillian town of Valladolid and studied law at the University of Leon. He became the youngest Socialist member of Parliament at age 26 and has worked for the party ever since.
Tall, thin and well-dressed, Mr. Zapatero has a calm, friendly manner and deep, sonorous voice that offset his image as wide-eyed and awkward. He is strongly attached to his family and has succeeded in keeping his wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, a classical singer, and two children out of the public eye.
He has a reputation as a homebody who likes to sleep in his own bed and is out of his element at international gatherings. Unlike many European leaders, he speaks only one language fluently, his own. Besides pulling troops out of Iraq, he has rejected calls for Spain to play a bigger role in Afghanistan. Spain has several hundred troops there, but has refused to move them from the relatively stable Northwest of the country to the war-torn south.
“Zapatero is a product of the party,” said Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, a professor of sociology at the Complutense University in Madrid. “He’s an apparatchik. He has no other career, no travel. He’s been between Leon and Madrid all his life.”
Mr. Zapatero is the son of a lawyer and grandson of a Republican army officer killed by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. He was born in the Castillian town of Valladolid and studied law at the University of Leon. He became the youngest Socialist member of Parliament at age 26 and has worked for the party ever since.
Tall, thin and well-dressed, Mr. Zapatero has a calm, friendly manner and deep, sonorous voice that offset his image as wide-eyed and awkward. He is strongly attached to his family and has succeeded in keeping his wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, a classical singer, and two children out of the public eye.
He has a reputation as a homebody who likes to sleep in his own bed and is out of his element at international gatherings. Unlike many European leaders, he speaks only one language fluently, his own. Besides pulling troops out of Iraq, he has rejected calls for Spain to play a bigger role in Afghanistan. Spain has several hundred troops there, but has refused to move them from the relatively stable Northwest of the country to the war-torn south.
“Zapatero is a product of the party,” said Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, a professor of sociology at the Complutense University in Madrid. “He’s an apparatchik. He has no other career, no travel. He’s been between Leon and Madrid all his life.”