The meaning of Zapatero's Cabinet shakeup: Zap takes a firmer hold on power. Jose Bono, the outgoing minister of defense, was always more of a rival than a colleague of Zap's; remember, Zap beat out Bono at the Socialist party convention for the job as PSOE top dog by only a handful of votes. Bono is a party hack, not a cabinet minister, and I'm not sure whether he was ever in sync with the rest of the administration on anything. There were continuous embarrassing discrepancies between what came out of the foreign office and the defense ministry; one would say we're selling arms to Angola, and the other would say we're not, and the first would say we are, and so on. I don't think he was ever comfortable as minister, and he supposedly asked to step down six months ago.

Alonso, the new man at defense, is one of Zap's buddies, and Rubalcaba, the guy who takes over for Alonso at interior, is the consummate Socialist insider. Zap has put his men at the two ministries that are going to do the dealing with ETA, as defense and interior are in charge of security. This means he's in charge.

In general, Zap is riding a high wave right now. His approval rating in the polls is very high, and the PSOE would beat the PP by about eight points, something like 44%-36%, if an election were held right now. He's been boosted by the solution to the Catalan statute hassle and ETA's cease-fire offer; yeah, I know the statute has its faults, and I don't trust the terrorists either, but it's looked good to the public. None of the mud the PP is slinging is sticking, either. This March 11 stuff is getting very old and it is not going to win the PP the next election. Now, Zap won't stay so popular forever, and 36% or so is the absolute minimum share of the vote the PP could possibly pull in the 2008 election, so there's no reason to be down in the dumps, especially since we have two more years in which to get organized.

The only thing that is going to beat the PSOE in 2008, though, is a positive upbeat message of competence and stability. This is not what we're getting from Acebes and Zaplana, who are the two most disliked PP leaders, and who are almost as despised as Carod-Rovira. Rule Number One of politics: If the voters hate your candidates, they're not going to vote for you. Acebes and Zaplana turn people off, sort of like Arlen Spector or Al D'Amato or Tom DeLay. You don't want people like this as the public image of your party. Get someone attractive who people like.

Can you believe the Marbella scandal? I certainly can. I had no idea they'd scammed €2.4 billion, though, which is more than the GDP of some African countries. See, several beach towns in southern Spain, including Marbella and Torremolinos and Benidorm, made deals with the devil starting back in the sixties. Local property developers (there's no bigger bunch of jackals except for lawyers) made huge amounts of money sticking up expensive, tasteless, and frequently unlicensed developments, and of course they had local political influence. Marbella, especially, became a magnet for the trashy new rich of Spain.

What people found most noteworthy about all the money scammed by these guys, who include the mayor and several members of the city council, was what they did with it. They bought flashy houses and decorated them in a style that puts Las Vegas to shame. I think what the Spaniards were most disgusted with was the bullfighterish/flamenco singer taste involved. By the way, when you're wondering who the world market for stuff like poached elephant tusks and tiger skins is, it's these guys.

The PP, get this, is going to run in the next Marbella municipal election on the platform that they're the only party whose leader isn't in jail. I suppose that's pretty convincing.

Barcelona has effectively clinched this year's football league championship, though it'll be two or three weeks before they win the title mathematically. They've been in a bit of a slump lately, which means they're not playing quite as brilliantly as they were in, say, December. Now, a slump for Barcelona is three consecutive draws, two away and one against Real Madrid, and they showed every sign of snapping out of it in the second leg of the Champions' League semifinals against Benfica. Tonight we'll see what they do against Racing Santander, which is a much weaker team.

Real Madrid is just terrible, one of the worst squads I've ever seen them put on the field. I still think that their problem is that Guti, Ramos, and Beckham have cutesy-poo meterosexual haircuts and the other team thinks they're teenage girls. Guti's such a whiner he got himself kicked out of the game against Real Sociedad last night, same as Roberto Carlos did against Barcelona. About their only bright spot is that Ronaldo is starting to play better.

Here's the ridiculous American soccer league rumor floating around: Ronaldo will move to Red Bull New York, formerly the MetroStars. Yeah, right, they've got forty million bucks to spend for his transfer and eight million more a year to pay him, not to mention his huge endorsment losses if he plays outside of Europe. Romario I might believe, but not Ronaldo.

The American league has decided they're going to imitate the European leagues by naming their teams after European teams, so we have D.C. United, which is bad, FC Dallas, which is worse, and, get this one, Real Salt Lake. That's just dorky. I suppose it's better than the former team names, which included the Kansas City Wiz and the Dallas Burn. This meant that TV sports announcers could say, "In soccer action tonight, we have the MetroStars and Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Detroit, and the Wiz and the Burn."