THE CHILLING OF FREE SPEECH IN SPAIN has worked:

The glossy magazine at the centre of a row over holiday photos of the prime minister's daughters apologised Thursday to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his wife.

The editor of Diez Minutos, which specialises in showbiz and celebrity paparazzi photo-spreads, said sorry for printing the four-page piece with pictures of the couple's daughters Laura and Alba, who are aged eight and ten.

In the magazine's feature, the girls' faces cannot be seen, but the editor said the identities of the girls was obvious.

The row blew up Wednesday when Zapatero and his wife Sonsoles Espinosa sent an urgent fax to the magazine Diez Minutos asking the editor not to syndicate pictures of their two girls on their summer holiday in Minorca.

The family did not agree to the feature.

Headlined 'Zapatero, his first holiday as president', the piece carries colour pictures of the two girls.

According to government sources, Zapatero and his wife claim the pictures have "compromised the right to privacy of the two minors".

Now that Zapatero has made even clearer his determination to protect the privacy of his two daughters, will he please stop bringing them into his political discourse, as if the two kids were his unofficial advisors in international relations and internal politics?

As I said my daughters are aged 10 and 8 and from the very day I won the election they were asking me every night: "Daddy, when are you going to bring the troops home [from Iraq]?" Because the debate about the war was so incredible...

He's done it several times, but this is the only example in English that I could find.

UPDATE. Reader Marzo warns that the last link to the International Herald Tribune containing the full transcript of the interview with Zapatero is no longer available. It can be found in the New York Times too.