ANTI-AMERICANISM in Spain is a double-whammy, because unlike many countries, it affects both sides of the political spectrum. On the right, they still remember the US took Cuba and the Philippines in the Spanish-American war at the very end of the 19th century, signaling the complete end of the once, they reason, vibrant Spanish empire's domination of the world; plus the propaganda during the Franco dictatorship (1936-1975) was, particularly during the first 20 years, heavily anti-American because, after all, the US had defeated Franco's ideological cousins, the Nazis and fascists, during World War II.

On the left, well, it's like everwhere else, only worse: adding up to the usual leftists' anti-Americanism, they are also still resenting that the Eisenhower administration helped ending Spain's isolation and gave the country international respectability for the first time since the end of the Civil War (examplified by the iconic hug between Franco and Eisenhower when the US president landed in Madrid for his historic visit, the first one by a mejor head of state since the end of the conflict). Oddly, the US-Spanish treaty of 1952 started the economic development that trickled down towards a gradual social and political modernization, which ultimately lead to a successful democratic transition after Franco's death. I'm saying it's odd because the same people who where protesting regime change in Iraq by the US because "you can't bring democracy with guns, but with engagement and pressure" are also complaining that the US engaged and pressured (as much as it was reasonable during the Cold War, of course) the Spanish dictatorship toward relaxing its authoritarian rule.

There's even the theory that the US might have participated, supported, or at least turned a blind eye, at ETA's assassination of Franco's appointed successor, Admiral Carrero Blanco, a real hardliner who was killed when his car blew up in 1973, reducing the likeliness that the dictatorship would continue when Franco went to hell. It took several months for several members of the terrorist group ETA to excavate a tunnel where the explosives were placed, under a busy street downtown Madrid, only yards away from the US embassy. And it was only a few months after Spiro Agnew's visit, when he allegedly informed Nixon that he was surprised that the security detail of the regimes's heir was so weak (just a driver, one bodyguard, an unarmored Dodge car, and the exact same route from home to church to the office and back to home every single day of the week). I'm no conspirazoid, but I'd say it's more than questionable that, to begin with, no one at the US embassy heard or noticed anything (and if that's the case, that the CIA or some US agency helped, I'd congratulate them for the smart move).

In any case, I wonder how someone against regime change via war can also be against peaceful regime change (engagement, pressure plus a targeted decapitation, perhaps). Maybe it's just the Revel rule: "reproaching the United States for some shortcoming, and then for its opposite ... a convincing sign that we are in the presence not of rational analysis, but of obsession."

So, if you add anti-Americanism on the right and on the left, no wonder that Zapatero's anti-US stance is quite popular in Spain. It lead him to do very unsmart things before and after he took office, about which I have written in this blog several times. So, after banking on a Kerry victory, he's spinning furiosly to contain damages as Bush has been re-elected:

Six months after Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero swept to power, Spain has switched from being one of Washington's staunchest allies to perhaps its sharpest critic in Western Europe.

Gone are pre-Iraq war snapshots of Spain's former conservative leader Jose Maria Aznar grinning alongside President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In their place are more recent images of Zapatero flanked by leaders of Europe's anti-war camp -- French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- at a summit this fall in Madrid.

"Old Europe is alive and well," Zapatero declared recently, rebutting the famous dismissal of Paris and Berlin by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Now that Bush has been re-elected, Zapatero may have to work hard to mend diplomatic fences. Signaling an awareness of that fact, the Spanish leader sent a telegram to Bush on Thursday saying that he and his government "have the firm desire to cooperate with you and with your administration" and even offered his best wishes to Bush as "the president of this great nation."

The liberal daily El Mundo described Zapatero, who clearly had pinned his hopes on Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry, as "having been doused by reality.''