I'm not sure how the ministries work in Spain, but this sounds like Zapatero wants his man in there...someone who will get a peace agreement accomplished and not mess it up.

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

Yeah, all true.

ZP wants his man on interior now that it would need someone overtly political.

Keeping the distances , this is like placing Karl Rove in the justice department...but in Spain it is for a good reason. He is the mastermind behind the stategy for a liberal and federal Spain against the rigth-wing central visions in Spain (his motto is something like the rich gets rich if the poor gets richer). He is hated by anybody or anything that looks like or talks like neocon....I say it is fair to say that some people in the hard right are even a little bit scared...he has no problem on using...let's call it tough tactics.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Zapatero has replaced only two ministers, Education and Defence, on the same week that each department got landmark legislation approved by parliament. The argument is "they have carried out their part of our electoral platform, so we're going to start a new stage with new people".

Zapatero has also moved PSOE's parliament faction leader to interior and the former interior minister to defence. In that way he indeed controls everything having to do with the ETA ceasefire. Seriously, Alonso (Defence), Rubalcaba (Interior) and de la Vega (VP) are all heavyweights, very skilled politicians, and loyal to Zapatero.

Zapatero is proving a lot more effective than I gave him credit for. But that also has to do with my being sympathetic to him and not wanting to let that influence my analysis, so my scepticism may have been an overcompensation.

I now firmly believe Zapatero will be in power for 8, maybe 12 years, and will accomplish a lot, but I'll still be a bit cynical in my public assessment.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman