The first article comes the US News and World Report:
Photo of Obama and Spain's First Children Causes a Stir
September 25, 2009 04:53 PM ET | Paul Bedard, Alex Kingsbury
By Alex Kingsbury, Washington Whispers
Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was in for a rude shock if he thought the same privacy conventions that shield the children of public figures in his home country would extend to the United States. Zapatero brought his wife and two daughters along on his trip to New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, and on Wednesday he and his family posed for a photograph with President Obama at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The photo caused a huge stir in Spain because the public had never before seen an image of its leader's children, ages 13 and 16, who appeared in the photograph sporting slightly gothic attire.
The photo, credited in the Spanish press to White House photog Lawrence Jackson, was posted on the State Department Flickr site, according to sources. Conservative news outlets in Spain prominently featured the photograph of the Socialist leader's family—with the faces slightly pixilated to comply with the country's aforementioned privacy laws concerning minors—in their papers and on their websites. The conservative El Mundo newspaper put the photograph on Page A1. The liberal El Pais, meanwhile, ran a detailed explainer about why it was not publishing the offending image.
After a request by the Spanish government, the White House removed the photograph from the State Department website. But it was too late. Many Spanish in-boxes today were flooded with a series of E-mails with the photograph—obviously altered—depicting the two teens as members of the Addams Family, the band KISS, and J. R. R. Tolkien's troll-like Orcs.
The second article is from the Guardian:
Pictures of Spanish PM's daughters get thumbs up from goths
Spanish prime minister tries to stop publication of pictures of daughters at White House wearing black clothes and high boots
As he stood for photographs with his teenage daughters beside Barack and Michelle Obama, a smiling Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, must have thought he was getting the ultimate family album picture.
It did not occur to him that official Obama pictures are uploaded on to the US state department's Flickr page, or that the black clothes and calf-high boots worn by one of his offspring might brighten the lives of Spain's adolescent goths.
Yesterday his office was scrambling to remove all traces of the snaps, alleging that – unlike the Obamas – Zapatero has always kept his daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, out of the public eye. Officials also persuaded the state-owned Spanish news agency EFE not to distribute photographs of the two girls at the UN.
They reportedly reminded the agency that the law allowed Zapatero and his wife to insist images of their underage children should not be published – even with their faces pixellated out. However, the photograph was on the front page on several national Spanish newspapers – for many Spaniards their first glimpse of the prime minister's full family.
EFE confirmed it had decided not to distribute pictures of Mr Zapatero's daughters as soon as it received them because "they should not have their personal rights prejudiced by the prime minister's decision to take them to New York."
Finally, I thought I'd include the AFP announcment about Obama's visit to Spain next May:
Obama to visit Spain for US-EU summit in May: report
(AFP)
MADRID — US President Barack Obama will make his first official to Spain in May to attend a US-EU summit, Spanish public television said Sunday.
The May 24-25 summit is scheduled as part of Spain's six-month presidency of the European Union that begins on January 1, RTVE said.
A source at the office of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero would confirm only that an EU-US summit would take place in Madrid during Spain's EU presidency, "probably in May."
RTVE, which did not indicate its sources, also said that the Spanish capital will host a summit involving the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean on May 17-18.
Obama and Zapatero last met at last week's G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
Washington and Madrid announced last week that the Spanish leader would make his first official visit to the White House on October 13 for talks with Obama.
The socialist prime minister had a frosty relationship with Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, whom he angered by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq immediately after his election in 2004.
The troops had been sent by Zapatero's conservative predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar.
Zapatero met Obama on the sidelines of the US-EU summit in Prague in April. At the time the Spanish PM said the meeting opened "a new era in relations" between their two countries.
Tell me: Was all the press in Spain about the Zapatero family photo with the Obamas appropriate?
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