FROM SPY CHIEF to glorified concierge:

For Jorge Dezcallar, the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, preparing for the funeral on Friday of John Paul II requires information-gathering skills honed as the chief of Spain's foreign intelligence services.

These days, Dezcallar, instead of terrorists and money launderers, is gathering intelligence on hotel rooms and air- and land-traffic patterns in an all-out logistical war.

"All of a sudden we're dealing with the biggest event in the world," he said in an interview. "I have members of Parliament and former ministers calling me, begging me, 'Can you help me find a room? Can you get me a seat at the funeral?'

Guess there's no military commitment, or nowhere to withdraw from, so the best way to use the skills of an intelligence specialist is to send him to one of the most pompous, useless works: the embassy at the Vatican.

And not that Zapatero doesn't have reasons to be unhappy with him; as someone close to former Socialist PM Felipe Gonzalez, Dezcallar was Spain's ambassador to Morocco when he didn't foresee the invasion of the Parsley Island, and was after that promoted by Aznar (in a move which was difficult to understand, after all he was close to the Socialists and his work didn't exactly shine considering the military tensions between Spain and Morocco) to top chief of the intelligence services which didn't foresee the March 11 bomb attacks carried by... Moroccan Islamic terrorists.

The man's a real piece of work. Come think of it, maybe it's better he spends his time looking for hotel rooms in the Rome. We'll just have to wait and see if in a couple of years there's a terrorist attack in Spain perpetrated by Italian Catholic terrorists!