The PSOE is as guilty of the repression against the Basque people as the PP. The PP members are openly fascists, but some of the members of the PSOE seems to care more about Spain's "unity" than about justice and democracy.
Still, one has to wonder if this time, Zapatero is for real.
Check this note:
Zapatero reshuffles cabinet before ETA talks
Fri Apr 7, 4:11 PM ET
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero reshuffled his cabinet, placing allies in two key posts, as the process of bringing a lasting peace to the Basque country gets under way.
Defence Minister Jose Bono was replaced by Interior Minister Jose Antonio, whose portfolio is handed to Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.
The changes take place in a political landscape radically changed by last month's declaration by the Basque separatist movement ETA of a permanent ceasefire.
Rubalcaba, 54, is one of the heavyweight figures in the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), a confidant of Zapatero and one of the architects of the strategy that led to ETA's declaration.
"The man who long directed the process in the shadows is now at its head," commented the moderate Basque PNV party.
Rubalcaba, a talented speaker, was previously the spokesman of the socialists in the national assembly and has a track record in difficult negotiations, not least those involving increasing self-rule in Catalonia, a process attacked by the political right as the start of the "balkanisation" of Spain.
As interior minister he will bear prime responsibility for monitoring the ETA ceasefire declared on March 24 and will submit confidential fortnightly reports to Zapatero.
On the basis of these Zapatero hopes to be able to go to the parliament at the end of May or beginning of June to win endorsement for the opening of formal talks with ETA.
His predecessor, now switched to defence, Jose Antonio Alonso, 46, a former judge, was a novice when he entered the government in 2004 when the country was still in a state of shock after the March 11 train bombings which took some 196 lives.
He, too, is a confidant of Zapatero, and has impressed with his coolness and composure at the head of a ministry that has had to deal with both Islamist and Basque terrorism.
He takes over a ministry supervising disciplined armed forces, solidly rooted in democratic principles, even if tensions over the issue of greater Catalonian autonomy produced rumblings that were swiftly and severely slapped down.
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