Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been working the story that broke in Spanish media yesterday about John McCain, in a radio interview, responding to a question about Prime Minister Jose Zapatero of Spain as if he was a Latin American leader. You can hear the original interview audio here.

About two minutes in, the interviewer asks if he would meet with Zapatero, and McCain replies with a boilerplate response about "have to look at the relations" and being willing to meet with those who share our goals, and goes on to yammer about Mexico. So she tries again, three more times. Explicitly says "I'm talking about the president of Spain," and still gets the same generic answer.

Opinion is divided as to whether this presages some new hard-line neocon stance against one of our NATO allies, or McCain just doesn't know...uh... where Spain is?

Update: The story has been picked up by Time Magazine. They're in the "neocon not inviting Spain to the cool kids party" camp. But if that were true, you would think McCain would have said something that indicated assent to the interviewer's clarification on Spain. Listen for yourself and see what you think.