Word: spaining
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...When Spain's Socialists ousted the conservative Popular Party four years ago, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero took the surprise election victory as a mandate for fundamental change. He immediately pulled the country's troops out of Iraq, soon legalized gay marriage, and began to take on centuries of entrenched machismo. If his party's gathering this past weekend is any indication, Zapatero's 2008 political platform will be no less dramatic...
...Zapatero's successes during his term as Prime Minister have come largely in the dramatic social reforms that have not only modernized Spain but transformed it into an international leader. His government's first piece of legislation was a sweeping law to protect women against domestic violence, and in the succeeding months Zapatero's administration eased divorce laws, required gender parity in political parties, reduced the Catholic Church's influence in education, officially recognized victims of Franco's repression, and made Spain the third country in the world after Holland and Belgium to legalize gay marriage...
...Prime Minister's efforts have been successful. The violent collapse of peace negotiations with the Basque separatist group ETA is his most notable failure - and one that continues to haunt him. Nonetheless, Spain is a very different place now than it was four years...
...American economist Joseph Stiglitz; Australian anti-nuclear expert and Nobel Laureate Helen Caldicott; ex-Senior Vice-President of the World Bank, Nicolas Stern; and Maria Joao Rodrigues, an architect of the E.U.'s Lisbon Agenda - the council offered a slate of ideas that, if put into action, would position Spain on the cutting edge of international, environmental, economic and social justice policy...
...education as a key stimulus for economic growth. "To hear him say that gives us incentive to improve our proposals even more." And in a speech closing Saturday's meeting, Labor Minister Jesús Caldera responded to Caldicott's impassioned critique of nuclear energy by promising to take Spain's remaining eight reactors out of service "when they reach the end of their useful lives...