HITTING ROCKS over Cuba:

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his political spin doctors have been especially busy this summer. Indeed, they have been making furious rounds on the national television talk show circuit, trying to explain to an increasingly skeptical Spanish public just why the Socialist government’s “progressive” foreign policy of coddling third world despots has turned Spain into one of the most marginalized countries in the European Union.

Soeren Kern writes on Zapatero's government sucking up to Cuba. Not really surprising in the knee-jerk left -as opposed to the reflective, sensible left- who still has a romanticized view of Castro. And who loves anyone who opposes the US, be it Castro, Ahmadinejad, or others.

But they may be another factor in play too. Zapatero 'needed' Cuba to help him in his main project -failed now- for which he was probably expecting to get the Nobel Peace Prize soon: the negotiation with ETA. According to the Madrid daily El Mundo (link in Spanish), Cuba was acting as the messenger/conduit through which the negotiations were carried. So Cuba was helping Zapatero with the vital negotiation with ETA, and in turn Zapatero was helping Cuba to fend off the pressures from the international community regarding its human rights record. So everybody "wins."

Except regular Cubans and Spaniards.