Miguel Sebastián was the personal Economics advisor to Zapatero, and I have heard he had set up a 50-person economic policy unit at La Moncloa (the PM's residence). 50 people! Can you imagine what 50 ETers could do if they hired us full-time for an economic policy unit? And yet, no economic policy has come out of La Moncloa in these 3 years... During the 2004 election campaign, it was Jordi Sevilla and the PSOE economic policy unit that advised Zapatero, but some time after taking power, Zapatero was "charmed" by Sebastián and he decided to make him his personal economic advisor. This mush have caused blisters not only with Jordi Sevilla but also with Pedro Solbes (Economics and Finance minister already in 1993-6 and a member of the Prodi Commission) who, I have heard rumoured, was increasingly unhappy in Zapatero's government and might leave. The Madrid Socialist Federation (FSM) is in disarray and has been for years. The candidate for Mayor in 2003 was Trinidad Jiménez, who Zapatero recently gave a job dealing with international cooperation with Latin America. This left a vacancy that he tried to fill "digitally" (by imposing a candidate himself). He first tried José Bono (his first Defence Minister) but Bono declined. Then he tried to draft his VP, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, but a group of PSOE feminists thwarted that on the argument that the first (and very effective) female VP shouldn't be used to fix Zapatero's messes. So, he selected Sebastián, who was totally unknown in Madrid and received the nickname sevahostiar ("he's going to crash and burn").

So this has been a personal defeat for Zapatero, or else Zapatero is a consummate strategist and he decided to sacrifice Sebastián to Gallardón in order to; 1) give "moderate" Gallardón a little help against hardliner Aguirre when time comes (in 2008) to replace Rajoy as the PP leader; 2) disband the economic policy unit at La Moncloa and make the PSOE apparatus and Solbes happy.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.