Spain’s Leader Moves Ahead on Reforms

MADRID —  A remarkable thing happens each time Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero convenes his Cabinet: Half the seats are taken by women.

The gold-embossed leather portfolios they received upon assuming office still say “Ministro,” the masculine form. But Zapatero has made a point of giving top jobs to women, one of a flurry of innovations he has made since his unexpected election three days after the most deadly terrorist attacks in Spanish history.

Zapatero’s upset victory ended eight years of conservative rule and raised hopes of sweeping social and political change in a country where memories still live of a bitter civil war and decades of dictatorship.

In the first 100 days of his Socialist government, he withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq and proposed laws that would recognize gay marriage, stiffen penalties for domestic violence, and relax restrictions on abortion, divorce and the use of embryos for stem-cell research.

The Iraq withdrawal angered the Bush administration; the rest angered the powerful Roman Catholic Church -- two of the closest allies of Zapatero’s predecessor.

“We are trying to truly change this country,” Zapatero’s deputy, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, said in a television interview last week. She is the first woman to hold the post.

Some here speak of a New Spain, of a veritable revolution in a modern, democratic society that still holds many conservative convictions.

But critics say many of the measures adopted or proposed thus far are flashy gestures that do little to solve the country’s more profound problems.

“Zapatero has taken our politics through a 180-degree turn, adopting a benevolent and conciliatory idealism ... bordering on the sugariness of Disneyland,” political analyst Enrique Gil Calvo said.

“The danger of this immaculate idealism is that, sooner or later, frustration will be felt at the unfounded expectations so gratuitously created,” Gil Calvo wrote in the left-of-center newspaper El Pais.

From its new seat in the opposition, the Popular Party of former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar complains that many of Zapatero’s reforms are merely warmed-over initiatives from the previous government. And others, it says, are a deliberate, spiteful attempt to dismantle the achievements of the last eight years.

Zapatero’s first act after assuming leadership was to pull Spain’s troops out of Iraq.

The White House portrayed this as a cowardly capitulation to the Islamic militants who blew up four Madrid commuter trains during the morning rush hour on March 11, killing nearly 200 people. But Zapatero was in fact keeping a campaign promise made long before the attacks -- and fulfilling the desires of the vast majority of Spaniards who opposed the war in Iraq.

Voters’ anger at Aznar for plunging their country into that war, at his perceived arrogance for having ignored public opinion and the widely held perception that he distorted the truth about the March attacks for political gain led to a huge turnout that swept the Socialists into power.

The new prime minister quickly turned to his ambitious social agenda, much of which is aimed at improving the status of women in the country that made machismo famous -- where women still earn considerably less than men and rarely head businesses or institutes of power. Zapatero doubled the number of female ministers, from four in the Aznar government to eight.

Zapatero said he wanted to make equality of the sexes a signature achievement of his administration.

Cynics say he is pandering to female voters, whose numbers are increasing and who are pointing steadily to the left.

His first significant bill to go to parliament would stiffen penalties for domestic violence, threats against and the abuse of women by men; institute school programs; and allocate more money for shelters.

“The fight against discrimination of women isn’t real if it doesn’t include action that ends, definitively, this greatest national shame of our time,” Zapatero said.

The number of women killed by partners or family members has been growing steadily for several years, according to statistics compiled by advocacy organizations. Ninety-seven women were killed last year, by this count; in the first week of this month, a woman was killed every day.

Women’s groups welcomed the proposed legislation but remained cautious about how quickly the plight of abused women would change.

Already, conservative jurists have appeared before parliament to argue that, if passed, the law would violate the constitution because it singles out one group for special treatment.

“We are encouraged because the attitude [of the Zapatero government] is certainly different. It’s certainly more progressive,” said Morgana Vituvia, a psychologist with the Commission to Investigate Abuse of Women.

“At least there is dialogue. For a change, the government is asking us what we want.”

Zapatero also wants to rewrite the constitution to allow a woman to ascend to the throne and has already abolished an Aznar law that required Catholic instruction in schools.

That gesture, along with plans to introduce a measure in September legalizing gay marriage, has upset the church, which was especially close to the conservative Aznar.

“There is concern within the church over certain specific matters,” Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, a spokesman for Spain’s bishops, told The Times. “In principle, we have a general understanding with the government. But over several concrete issues, we have grave discrepancies.”

For the time being, Zapatero seems to have decided that he can weather criticism from the church and even from the U.S.

But, apparently trying to make amends, Zapatero plans to double the number of Spanish troops in Afghanistan, and last week, his foreign minister offered to send experts to Iraq to help with elections set for January.

Zapatero was elected head of the Socialist Party four years ago and was described at the time as a “young unknown.” His relative obscurity frees him of the baggage of his party’s scandal-ridden past. But it also points up his inexperience, or at least an enthusiasm -- some say naivete -- that may backfire.

Such was the case last week when he invited the president of the Catalonia region, Pasqual Maragall, to a meeting in Madrid. The question of regional autonomy is one of the trickiest the prime minister faces. With Catalonia demanding greater power, many Spaniards fear a Balkanization of their country.

And so Zapatero stood on the steps of Madrid’s Moncloa Palace, Maragall at his side, and announced that the state’s telecom watchdog agency would transfer its headquarters to Barcelona, Catalonia’s capital, in an important gesture of decentralization.

Maragall thanked him, praised the “new era,” and then grabbed the ball and ran with it. In additional concessions, Maragall announced, Barcelona would help Madrid on matters of foreign policy, and the constitution would be revised to recognize Catalan and other regional languages. Plus, Catalonia expected to receive pieces of the airline and railroad companies.

Zapatero looked on with a frozen smile.

An aide later explained that Zapatero hadn’t granted the requests, merely heard the proposal. Still, the damage was done.

Mariano Rajoy, head of the Popular Party, blasted Zapatero for failing to “clearly fix the rules of the game.”

As the conservative newspaper El Mundo put it in headlines the next day: Zapatero Has Got to Learn to Say No.

The reforms he has promoted certainly appeal to significant constituencies, but they fail to tackle other pressing problems, such as unemployment and illegal immigration. Although his government has sanctioned hearings examining how the March attacks happened, he has not enacted concrete measures to fight terrorism.

For Zapatero to succeed, he will have to do something for people such as Eduardo Mardomingo.

At 31, Mardomingo still lives at home with his parents and two brothers, as does his fiancee, Esther Losada, 30. They have steady jobs but cannot begin to afford their own place, and have had to put marriage, children and their lives on hold for years.

Their problem is typical for legions of young people throughout urban Spain, where speculation, black-market dealings and other distortions have sent housing prices soaring. Before the last elections, the housing crunch was cited as one of the issues of most concern to voters.

Mardomingo used to vote for the Popular Party. But when Aznar and his ministers refused to even acknowledge that there was a problem, Mardomingo said, he decided to cast his ballot for Zapatero.

Zapatero has taken an initial step by creating a Housing Ministry. Now Mardomingo is waiting for a real solution.

“It may be impossible to resolve, but I want to think he will try,” he said. “That’s why I gave him my vote.”