ZAPATERO, el increíble hombre menguante. No lo digo yo, lo dice el International Herald Tribune:

As the international media followed every detail of Nicolas Sarkozy's American vacation last week, it was difficult, from Madrid, not to marvel at the very different scenario in Andalusia, where José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was taking his holiday.

Unlike the French president, for Zapatero there was no hobnobbing with other world leaders, no pack of foreign paparazzi clicking in his wake and certainly no public appearances in his swimming trunks. He walked on the beach, fully dressed, and was snapped kissing a young immigrant boy.

That's about as international as the summer vacation is likely to get for Spain's stay-at-home leader, who, both at work and at play, shows little interest in globetrotting.

A decade of soaring economic growth and corporate expansion overseas has put Spain in the big leagues, but the country's political profile is shrinking under the leadership of a man deeply preoccupied with domestic reform and lacking in international experience.

"He is not there. It's as if he were not interested," says José María de Areilza, a former foreign-policy adviser to Zapatero's predecessor José María Aznar.

"This is a media-driven world, and you have to stay in the picture."

[...] Charles Grant, head of the Center for European Reform, a think tank based in London, says the decline in Spain's influence on Zapatero's watch has been "astonishing."

During the governments of the Socialist prime minister Felipe González and the conservative Aznar, who followed him, Spain punched above its weight, he says. But despite a team of respected diplomats, like Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's current foreign minister, and Alberto Navarro, the secretary of state for European affairs, "Spain is not one of the key players who decides what happens" in Europe.

Hay más. Seguro que esto no sale en el resumen de prensa de La Moncloa. Hace tiempo que no lo miro, pero cuando lo hacía sólo se podían leer pseudo-felaciones de la prensa internacional amiga, normalmente de países árabes.