The Zen Of Zapatero

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's office in Madrid's Moncloa Palace has an almost Zen-like atmosphere — bright and spare, with cool grey walls and stainless-steel furniture. And there's something Zen-like about Zapatero himself. The Spanish Prime Minister with the beatific smile says his role is not to shape public opinion but to follow it. "I don't want to be a great leader; I want to be a good democrat," he said in an interview with TIME last week. "I accept that when an overwhelming majority of citizens says something, they are right."

Zapatero calls this "citizen's socialism;" the opposition calls it rank populism. Either way it's a far cry from the stubborn conservatism of José María Aznar, the man he replaced five months ago. Aznar brought Spain into the U.S.-led Iraq coalition against the will of his people, and voters ousted his Popular Party (PP) three days after the March 11 Madrid terrorist attacks that killed 191. Zapatero's brand of "citizen's socialism" may be just a slogan — the Tao of political expedience — or it may be a way to impart a democratic glow to a foreign and domestic policy agenda that's long been dear to his Socialist Party (PSOE). But whether it's shtick or statesmanship, it has worked surprisingly well in the early days of Zapatero's government. Often derided as a compromise candidate who wasn't expected to win, Zapatero, 44, is riding high. A poll commissioned earlier this month by the radio network Cadena SER, which is considered close to the Socialists, found his approval rating at 60%, the highest of any Spanish politician in years.

The opposition has been fuming as it watches Zapatero dismantle prize parts of Aznar's legacy. On April 18, the day after he took office, he ordered Spain's 1,300 troops out of Iraq. He set up a government that has as many women ministers as men, and alternates them down the hierarchy, causing some to dub it la cremallera (the zipper). He canned the previous government's pharaonic €4 billion plan to divert water from the Ebro River in the north to drier regions further south, proposing a more modest desalinization program instead. He increased the minimum wage, pledged to do the same for pensions, and launched an unprecedented war against the dark side of Spanish machismo, stiffening laws against domestic violence and proposing the legalization of gay marriage and rapid, no-fault divorces.

A radical democrat committed to feminism is a major departure for Spanish politics, where the most successful politicians — among them Aznar and his Socialist predecessor, Felipe González — were macho men with killer political instincts. Zapatero's bet is that he can govern effectively and retain power simply by giving the people what they want. But that's a fickle foundation for policy. The time is bound to come for Zapatero, as for all political leaders, when he's unable to deliver on that grand promise. Indeed, the season of testing is already upon him. The coming challenges in domestic, foreign and economic policy will determine whether his "citizen's socialism" will work. "Up until now he's been throwing carrots to the masses," says Guillermo de la Dehesa, a prominent Spanish banker and economist. "It's only now that he faces tough issues, and we're all waiting to see how he does."

One of Zapatero's first tasks will be to establish his credentials in foreign policy, especially the Iraq war and the strains within the European Union. Last week he capped his country's about-face on Iraq by hosting the leaders of the E.U.'s antiwar faction, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, at a mini-summit in Madrid. Zapatero called those countries "the heart of Europe" and inverted U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous jibe by saying "old Europe is like new." A week earlier, during a visit to Tunisia, he called on all other coalition countries to pull their forces out of Iraq.

Zapatero constantly stresses that his government's resolve against terrorism is as firm as ever. The Socialists have faced charges at home and abroad that they only won the election because the bomb attacks scared the country into a retreat. Zapatero told TIME he "respects the views" of those who believe "that when the Spanish people voted for me they voted out of fear," but he contends such views reveal "a lack of knowledge of the Spanish people. This is the country that has suffered most from terrorism, with 1,000 killed by the [Basque] terrorist band ETA over the past 30 years. Our people have learned to adapt and understand that we have to combat [terrorism] by being firm but also by respecting democracy."