Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is in Washington this week for a series of meetings with political and economic leaders. The centerpiece of his visit is the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, where he is an invited speaker along with President Barack Obama. Zapatero's role in the breakfast, hosted by Congress and organized by conservative religious-based group The Fellowship Foundation (also known as The Family), is a source of scrutiny in his home country.
The minister originally announced that he was invited by Obama to attend the breakfast. After reviewing the invitation, the Moncloa realized he was invited by the host organization and not the White House. It may be assumed that the White House sought an invitation for the visiting PM.
Stickier still is the religious nature of the event. Spain, traditionally Catholic, has been making strides to separate itself from the Church. Most of the measures have come from Zapatero's administration and include sweeping social reforms in gay marriage and abortion rights.
Zapatero's Socialist Party is largely agnostic, though the minister (in keeping with the practice of separating private life from public) has never made his religious beliefs known. Questions have arisen what exactly Zapatero will say at the breakfast … and how he will say them.
In addition to being the first foreign leader in office to attend the breakfast (British PM Tony Blair was last year's speaker, but he had had since left office), Zapatero does not speak English. He would become the first speaker to address the breakfast in Spanish. It's a mildly complicated situation. When the Moncloa reportedly asked the White House for an interpreter, the White House replied they had nothing to do with the event.
Regardless what is said, it can be assumed that Zapatero will use the event to plea with Obama to reverse a decision not to attend the next EU summit in April in Madrid. In fact, it was the Spanish PM who assumed Obama would attend the meeting even though the summit never appeared in the White House's agenda. Zapatero, coming up for re-election in the midst of a devastating financial crisis, was hoping for a photo op with the American president on home soil.
I have now read this a couple times. It may be the two glasses of wine that are fogging my mind, but I am having a hard time getting a grasp on it. If, indeed, our so called national prayer breakfast is a religious ceremony hosted by some religious cult and putting pressure on the president and others to follow some sort of agenda, the right response is to disavow any relationship with it and have breakfast at Denny's or McDonalds and give a speech to the wait staff.
PS, how embarassing is it for us to have a nation with strong theocratic heritage beat us to making gay citizens full participants?
But really, I live in Spain (I am from US) and the prayer power breakfast should be the last reason that these 2 heads of state get together. Everyone in Spain is concerned that ol ZP is going to make a laughing stock of Spain in front of the mighty Americans. I guess they don't really get it that in the US, in reality, hardly anyone gives 2 shits what some foreign leader speaking some foreign language is or isn't going to say. Personally, I'd like to hear him say something in support of gay rights. Well, considering that no one is going to understand him anyway, at least Obama wouldn't be forced to respond. Regardless of what he says, everyone over here is going to be ashamed. Shame is a common national emotion.
I am American and have lived almost 20 years in Spain. Here they have made a big "hoo-ha" about him speaking at that breakfast just to distract us from the real problems that we have, which are scary to say the least. The man is completely aloof to the reality of the situation (19% unemployment), probably because he has never actually held a "real" job in his entire life. So, why should he care if anyone else has one? Hooray that Obama told him he´s not coming to the summit! The SOB deserves the snub and hopefully there will be more soon. The man is a walking shame of a PM.
There is an embarrasing video available showing a Hindu cleric who was invited to give the invocation for our Senate a few months ago. His prayer was interrupted by a series of three "Christians" shouting their own prayers and insults to the Hindu religion. Fortunately, they were arrested and the prayer continued. Later, in court, all charges were dropped. The various groups that supported these barbarians prated ignorant comments about this nation being a Christian nation founded by Christians who intended that only Christian
cults
oops, I meant religion should receive support of the government.
I guess we can be glad that there were no similar outbreaks at the prayer breakfast because of a man speaking in a "profane" language other than english at such an august assemblage.
What's ironic is that while Zapatero was in Washington claiming that despite the recession Spain is still economically strong, the IBEX saw it's worst day of activity since November 08 when the crisis began. Looks like he's taking pages from John McCain's campaign playbook.
Paul Krugman has a somewhat different take on the economic problems of Spain in today's column. See it at http://krugman.bl....com/?8dpc It seems that the housing bubble that was so central to the meltdown effected Spain by encouraging speculative building, especially by other Europeans, and higher wages plus high employment levels. When the bubble burst, unemployment soared, revenue dropped, and trouble emerged. Since Europe has a common currency, Spain cannot devalue their currency. Yet, since there is not shared social services such as in the US, there is no assistance from other European countries. Interesting read.
It took me a bit to find the article you were linking, but I also agree with him heartily on the healthcare solution. Yeah, that is an interesting take on Spain's plight.
The whole prayer breakfast thing is bizzare. Why do our Presidents attend this thing? Just how much power does this "Family" wield? Other than being a hotbed of sexual scandals of the "Christian" ilk, what do they do? Someone should check if we should shut them down with RICO.
I find that Mr Krugman seems to believe that there are few problems in the economy that cannot be solved by spending more money and spending it faster. He has been awarded a Nobel prize in economy so I am hesitant to disagree based on credentials. On the other hand, other Nobel economy recipients do disagree with him so....
As to fixing health care, I really would like to see someone specify what it is that needs fixing and then proceed to fix that. In my own opinion, the most critical need is to provide some sort of coverage for those legally residing in the US who are now not covered. That is very difficult and likely to be expensive. However, it is not fair to expect the health care system to care for them without remuneration. It is also unfair to expect municipalities to do so since some are far more likely to face costs than others.
Paul Krugman said it best in an earlier column about Spain shortly after Nov 08: Spain is like Florida but without the possibility of federal assistance.
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PS, how embarassing is it for us to have a nation with strong theocratic heritage beat us to making gay citizens full participants?