Did the United States put Zapatero in their sights?
With the case already open in the National Court, the first book on the former president's international role is released
MadridThe book could not be more opportune: journalist and deputy director of Vozpópuli, Isaac Blasco, has just published the book Zapatero, in Trump's crosshairs (2026, Última Línea). It is the first about the already controversial figure of the former Spanish president following the investigation opened against him by the National Court and deals precisely with the role Zapatero adopts after being president and sporadically serving on the Council of State. Blasco presented it this Thursday in Madrid, at the El Halcón Maltés bookstore, which was quickly too small for the crowd.
The book's thesis is of prime current importance: the influence of the United States in the case affecting Zapatero. But it goes beyond the messages found in Rodolfo Reyes, majority shareholder of Plus Ultra, which Homeland Security Investigations sends to the UDEF as a result of a dump of his mobile phone – evidence that Zapatero now wants to dismiss in the case – but Blasco raises the stakes: he places the turning point in 2018, when the Americans begin to focus on him due to his role in Venezuela. “They detect that he collaborates with interests that go against their own,” he states at the presentation, where he does not hide his critical view of the former PSOE leader. “He has sought to combine business with higher missions,” he says, alluding to his role as an international mediator.
The book's index is already a statement of intent: “From supervising clouds to laundering dictatorships”; “the man who only speaks with the wicked,” in reference to Iran, Qatar, and China; or “a singing chicken: Carvajal's accusing finger,” in reference to the former head of Chavista intelligence who, under custody in the United States, would be collaborating with information about figures linked to the regime with the Americans. According to the back cover, the book is a “story of an international struggle in which the United States, under Trump's leadership, focuses its attention on Zapatero as an uncomfortable actor in the new global order.” And it asks: “Mediator of peace or launderer of dictatorships?”. As the editorial summary points out, it will be a book “that leaves no one indifferent.”
