José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero On 12 October 2003, during the Fiesta Nacional de España military parade held in Madrid, then opposition leader and presidential candidate Zapatero remained seated as a U.S. Marine Corps honour guard carrying the American flag walked past Zapatero and other VIPs. Everybody else stood as with the rest of the foreign guest armies representations. He declared afterwards that his action was a protest against the war and certainly not intended as an insult to the American people. Later on, during an official visit to Tunisia shortly after Zapatero was elected, he asked all of the countries with troops in Iraq
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero other hand, defended the theory that the anger of the two Socialist AMs was caused by Zapatero's broken promise about the referred distribution of power within the Madrid section of the Socialist Party. That promise would have been made some months before the crisis in exchange of support for one of his more immediate collaborators (Trinidad Jiménez), who wanted to become the Socialist candidate for mayor of Madrid (the Spanish capital). Zapatero's team had entered into contact with José Luis Balbás through Enrique Martínez and Jesús Caldera (then Minister of Labor) In April 2000, Zapatero, Caldera and José Blanco had