BIG SHUFFLE in Spain's government -- just three days ago, Zapatero had forcefully said in a party rally that he would just change Labor minister Celestino Corbacho, and not because of the 20% unemployment but because he's going to run in Catalonia's regional election next month. Current interior minister gets a big promotion:

Perez Rubalcaba, considered an effective leader of the government and police campaign against the armed Basque separatist group ETA, is no stranger to the prime minister's sprawling compound on the western outskirts of Madrid. He worked there years ago as an aide to then Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.

Indeed: he was the government spokesman (equivalent to US' press secretary) during the years of the dirty war and death squads against ETA. True, he's doing a pretty good job nabbing ETA terrorists now, but he's still the image of someone who was lying through his teeth during one of the darkest episodes in Spain's post-Franco democratic era. He famously uttered the historic sentence that "There's no evidence that there's a dirty war against ETA, and will never be" only months after the interior minister Barrionuevo, his number 2, Vera, and his number 3, Sancristóbal,were sent to prison for organizing the extra-judicial killings from their official compounds. Oh well.

I'm going to miss Moratinos, though. They guy was a walking joke.