There is nothing like a visit from his old friend Tony Blair to put a smile on the lips of Spain's conservative prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar.
Mr Aznar is, according to Mr Blair during a Madrid visit last week, a "courageous" man showing great "leadership" over the Iraq crisis by throwing in his lot with the US and Britain in the group of nations prepared to take a belligerent stance against Saddam Hussein.
Yet, as Mr Blair heaped public praise on the man who has long been his closest ally in Europe, the blushing Mr Aznar was painfully aware that only a small fraction of his own voters agreed.
"I am sure that for both Mr Blair and myself it would be easier if we dedicated ourselves to something else," Mr Aznar admitted as his standing in the polls continued to tumble.
Those polls show that as few as one in six Spaniards supports war of any kind in Iraq - whether approved of by the UN, or not.
As a result, and for the first time since Mr Aznar came to power in 1996, his People's party has slipped behind the opposition, anti-war Socialists in polls on voting intention. El Pais newspaper's regular poll recently gave the Socialists a two point lead.
Despite this massive rejection and the fact that more than 2 million people took to the streets of Spanish cities to protest against war a fortnight ago, Mr Aznar has showed no signs of budging.
His country, which currently holds a seat on the UN security council, has co-signed with Britain and the US the draft resolution that, if approved, will almost certainly be the final trigger for war.
Superficially, it looks like Mr Aznar is leading his government on a path to mass electoral suicide.
Personally, however, the domestic political fallout will have little effect on Mr Aznar. He has already said he will not stand at the next election in 2004.
After he hands over the reins of government, aged just 51, he can be expected to look for a big international job. Whatever happens in Iraq, his international profile - as he jets backwards and forwards to the US and receives flattering profiles in the leading American newspapers - has been boosted considerably.
But few people, even those in opposition, believe Mr Aznar is flying in the face of popular opinion, and risking his party's future, with the selfish intention of boosting his own career.
Instead, Mr Aznar is carefully making sure that, should it prove a disaster, the decision to back George Bush will be viewed as his alone. As his wife, Ana Botella, put it in an interview at the weekend: "He will take all the responsibility for Iraq."
In fact, Mr Aznar is working from personal and political conviction. Like Mr Blair, he believes history will prove him right.
The Spanish prime minister was, anyway, a natural convert to the US position. His domestic policies are dominated by the fight against the armed Basque separatist group Eta, which he has declared to be his government's most important job.
Fighting Saddam Hussein is, for Mr Aznar, an extension of the same policy to a world scenario. Just as he refuses to talk to Eta, so he sees little point in trying to talk Saddam Hussein into decommissioning his most dangerous arms.
In private he compares Saddam Hussein to a neighbour who takes pot shots at you, then hides the weapons every time the police go around. You know the weapons are there, he says, but you just can't prove it and you know he is going to keep taking pot shots.
``We don't want anyone to tell us at some point in the future, 'You failed to confront the problems the world had," he said last week.
Added to his personal hatred of terrorism - which some observers suggest is partly fuelled by a failed Eta bomb attack on him in 1995 - is the natural affinity he feels for Mr Bush's conservative administration.
When Mr Bush made his first trip to Europe - which many predicted would be fraught with tensions and accompanied by massive popular protests - he chose to start in Madrid. The Spanish prime minister rolled out the red carpet, gave his guest a rapturous welcome and was visibly moved when Mr Bush pledged US assistance in the fight against Eta. The two men have seen eye-to-eye ever since.
But is the US's help against Eta enough to explain Mr Aznar's willingness to risk his party's future by supporting Mr Bush? Not according to a recent report in El Pais, which said that, while the US was helping with eavesdropping, that help had not yet produced much in the way of results.
So what does Spain get out of offering its support? Government spokesmen, trying to read the boss's mind, find that a difficult question to answer. "Something, I hope," said one.
But Mr Aznar, while driven by conviction, does have another objective in mind. He believes it is time for Spain, 27 years after it emerged from one of the longest rightwing dictatorships seen in Europe, to step into the first rank of nations.
``Spain must play in the first division," he said recently, ``not in the second and have others decide for it."
The expansion of the all-powerful G-7 group of nations to include Spain would, he believes, be fitting thanks for the sacrifice he is making. The person most able to make that happen is George Bush.