Chávez Proves His Real Value: Uniting the Socialist and Conservative Parties of Spain, As the World Looks On Bemused

Spain, and presumably the mushrooming expat Venezuelan community, is getting a big kick out of the king's (Juan Carlos I) historic rebuke aimed at firebrand Venezuelan populist crackpot Hugo Chávez in Chile yesterday at the 7th annual IberoAmerican Summit.

Every paper in Spain this Sunday morning, left, right, center, is emblazoned with the headline, "King Tells Chávez to Shut Up," or some version of that. But unaccustomed to following the rules of decorum and drunk with petro-power, the man who has single handedly destroyed a nation while purporting to fix it continued his petulant performance, insulting former Spanish president José María Aznar (whom he referred to repeatedly as a "fascist" and accused of having a hand in the attempted military coup against him in 2002). As if that were not antics enough, recently elected Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega seemed to follow Chávez's lead when it came his turn to speak, lambasting as "mafiosa" the Spanish electric company Unión Fenosa (for allegedly not making good on its promise to extend the electric grid to outlying regions of the country) and accusing Spain (along with the U.S.) of interfering in his country's domestic politics in order to (unsuccessfully) prevent his election in 2006. An exasperated Don Juan Carlos eventually abandoned the reunion as a visibly shaken and begrieved Michelle Bachelet, the meeting's host, scurried out after him.

No big fan of the PP (or the monarchy for that matter), it was interesting to learn Sunday morning that Aznar had called to thank both Zapatero and Don JC for intervening on his behalf. Surely an historic low point in these sorts of diplomatic summits. Leave it to Hugo to put a Romper Room face on an assemblage of the region's leaders, but also, perhaps testimony to the corrosive legacy of both the Monroe Doctrine and Spanish colonialism.