WP as CMS for Spanish/English Site

I need your opinion on the best possible solution to achieve my goal: using WP as the CMS for my employer.

The goal sounds simple but it involves having the same articles posted both in Spanish and English (not automatically translated). What I want is to be able to administer both blogs from the same Admin tool.

I am reading through the WordPress MU documentation and it seems overkill for my purposes as I am not planning to have hundreds of blogs under the domain, only two.

Is the current version of WP modifiable so that two blogs can be administered by one admin console? If so, do I have to have the blogs in the same database or can I separate into two dBs (I would prefer this option).

My main concern is that having to stand alone blogs would imply editors, authors contributors and subscribers etc would need to register twice..right? Or not necessarily?

Your thoughts please,
Thanks in advance!