**Visitors to Spain’s EU presidency website have been greeted by an image of hapless fictional character Mr Bean instead of Spain’s Socialist leader.**An unidentified hacker briefly hijacked the site on Monday, replacing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with that of a bumbling comedy buffoon.
In Spain, the similarity between Mr Zapatero and the Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson, is a long-standing joke.
The government said the site itself, www.eu2010.es, had not been attacked.
In a statement, it said that a hacker had taken a screenshot of the homepage to make a photo montage.
“The alleged attack exploited a vulnerability called cross-site scripting,” it said.
For most visitors, this meant that a smiling Mr Bean replaced Mr Zapatero, complete with a benign smile and the words “Hi there”.
In a recent edition of El Pais, Mr Zapatero was depicted as Mr Bean in a cartoon above an article that was highly critical of his handling of the economy in Spain, where unemployment has reached almost 20%.