Post by ratna455 on Feb 25, 2024 5:05:38 GMT
The press, and not to mention for the president, was the publication of the photo of his daughters with the Obama couple dressed as goths and the subsequent accusations of alleged censorship of the EFE agency for another image of them in the UN Assembly while the US president was speaking. Zapatero's reaction was impeccable when asked about the image that dominated the covers of the press and forums, despite a perceptible and logical sadness. We journalists commented on that reaction, we did not expect it, we just had to put ourselves in his place, that of his wife and that of the girls to get closer to knowing what could be going through his head. In a way, his usual coldness cracked a little, although he maintained it so as not to show us what he must have thought of the press at that delicate moment, to which he also thanked the respect they had always shown to his desire to protect Laura and Alba. -- The meeting with Shakira at the Ibero-American Summit in El Salvador was a real shock among the group of Spaniards who accompanied the president. The exquisite attention of diplomats and attendees to the Colombian singer - much prettier in person and without the aesthetic excesses of a concert - did not go unnoticed by anyone, not even Zapatero.
He always looked at these situations with amusement, as if they were not part of his reality. And in the end, it was he who received the most affectionate gestures from Shakira, who had no qualms about holding his arm affectionately while the two of Special Database them talked alone. The president looked at her like a daughter. In this sense, Zapatero was always indifferent to feminine beauty, at least visibly. Not a flicker of admiration in his encounters with spectacular women, like Shakira herself, Rania from Jordan, Carla Bruni or the Sheikha of Qatar . -- Berlusconi was the leader who caused Zapatero the most discomfort and with whom he was condemned to come to terms in his search for support in the G20, for example. I remember a press conference between the two of them in Sardinia, with Carme Chacón present, which was a real torture for everyone, especially for him. When the Italian prime minister began to talk about women as "a ladies' man" that he called himself, amidst the laughter of his people, Chacón thought that the president was going to stand him up right there. Zapatero's face was not one of the faces we had seen before: something like those of those TBO dolls with smoke coming out of their ears and scorpions in the cartoon.
However, the president disconcerted us by traveling impromptuly with Bernardino León to Villa Certosa to have coffee with Il Cavaliere that same day, after the joint appearance with Berlusconi. The Sardinian mansion was the scene of Berlusconi's 'bunga-bunga' and that trip, which was discovered and not officially communicated to the press, did not sit well with the Italian left. -- Traveling on the plane with the president always added a plus to the trips, even on occasions when the conversations were 'off'. I did quite a few: especially turbulent was a trip to China to attend the Asem Summit in search of support for Spain in the G20 (33 hours by plane and 33 hours spent in Beijing). After the beating, we journalists returned almost empty-handed due to the peculiar Eastern diplomacy, which is like a fragile tomb that must be avoided desecrating with any bad gesture. Tension of the journalists, tension of the president's collaborators, tension of the president... The return trip from Beijing to Madrid ended with some internal calls for order. 'In Zapatero's Suitcase' can be purchased online: libros.com/crowdfunding/en-la-maleta-de-zapatero in different formats and with different gifts. All profits will go to the NGO Aliad-Ultreia , which protects socially excluded people.
