Luis Ayllón
The Spanish government, late yesterday afternoon, expressed its support for the right of Cubans to demonstrate “freely and peacefully”, after the Castro regime had exercised repression against the thousands of demonstrators who in the last few hours occupied the streets of dozens of Cuban municipalities demanding “freedom”.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has just been headed by José Manuel Albares, told The Diplomat that “Spain, as a Latin American country, is following the situation in Cuba with great interest and very closely”. “We have been following events very closely since yesterday and we are waiting to see how the situation evolves today,” he added.
He also stressed that “Spain recognises the right to demonstrate freely and peacefully” and calls on the Cuban authorities to respect it.
The castrists authorities have violently broken up demonstrations and carried out numerous arrests, in what have been the largest demonstrations on the island in three decades, and which have now been unleashed, among other reasons, because of the economic crisis the country is experiencing.
The Foreign Affairs spokesman indicated that “Cuba is suffering a crisis in which several elements converge, including the economic crisis, as well as a tourism crisis derived from Covid”. To deal with this situation,” he stressed, “it would be desirable to increase the pace of reforms”.
He also expressed “concern about the severe shortages faced by its population”, and concluded: “We are also aware of the worsening pandemic on the island, which has been one of the determining factors in the crisis. We will explore ways to assist in ways that can alleviate the situation as we have done with other countries in the region”.
Hours before the Foreign Affairs spokesman’s statements, the opposition parties had criticised the Spanish government for not taking a position on the situation in Cuba and demanded that it defend the Cubans who are demanding freedom on the streets of the island.
From the PP, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, expressed her solidarity with Cuba, “a brother country – she said – to which we are so close so that it knows that Madrid is at its side”. She added. “We are concerned about Cuba and the 11 million Cubans who raise their voices in the streets demanding freedom, we are concerned about fear, prison and exile, and we are concerned about the Cuban president who, far from admitting protests from his people, who are tired, calls for revolution in the streets to silence them”.
Díaz Ayuso also stated that in Spain, the central executive “follows to the millimetre” the “script” of the “populisms” of Venezuela and Cuba.
The president of the PP, Pablo Casado, took the opportunity to say that in the government there are five ministers (those of Unidas Podemos), who claim Cuba as a democratic paradise. And he pointed out that while today there are protests all over Cuba demanding democracy and freedom, the second vice-president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, even said some time ago on her Twitter account that Fidel Castro was “a reference for everything he had done”.
For his part, the national spokesman for the PP and mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, wrote on his Twitter account: “Our Cuban brothers and sisters know that in Madrid they will always find an ally in their struggle for democracy and freedom. Strength and honour in their vindication, homeland and life”.
Ciudadanos was also very critical of the government’s silence on the protests and repression in Cuba. Its leader, Inés Arrimadas, challenged the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to break his “shameful silence” on Cuba and to come to the defence of Cuban democrats “in the face of communist tyranny” as, she stressed, US President Joe Biden has already done.
And the deputy secretary general, Daniel Pérez, had said earlier: “We are concerned because, after the inauguration, neither José Manuel Albares nor any other member of the government has spoken out” about the situation on the Caribbean island. For Pérez, it is “strange” that not even Sánchez, who in his opinion tends to be “quick on the trigger on Twitter” when it comes to taking a stance on other types of situations, has so far remained silent on Cuba. Furthermore, the Ciudadanos leader said that he hopes that Albares’ debut as Foreign Affairs Minister “does not also translate into a fiasco when it comes to acting quickly”, as, in his opinion, has happened with his predecessor, Arancha González Laya, in relation to the diplomatic crisis with Morocco.
For her part, the deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacis, who took part in a rally in front of the Congress of Deputies in support of the demonstrations that the island is experiencing, said that the Spanish capital “will put all its free places at the disposal of the people of Cuba to fight the dictatorship, to promote the freedom that does not exist now in Cuba”.
From Vox, its spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly, Rocío Monasterio, also called for an end to the “repression” in Cuba and accused the Spanish left of “promoting neo-slavery” by going to “Castroist” hotels and paying “tithes” to the leaders of the regime so that “then a minimum of euros reaches the people”.
Monasterio, who attended an afternoon rally outside the Cuban embassy in Madrid, called for the Castro “dictatorship” to be “neutralised” internationally and urged the European Union to be “brave” and not “lukewarm”. Addressing the Cuban demonstrators, he added: “We are with you, with the Cuban people, and we are ashamed of the Sánchez government, which has not been able to come out and say anything or support a people who are being oppressed, this is Sánchez’s socialism”.
Podemos, on the other hand, supported the Castro regime’s discourse. Thus, its Secretary for International Affairs, Idoia Villanueva, stressed that “it is urgent to put an end” to the embargo “imposed” by the United States (US) on Cuba for more than 60 years. According to a commentary on Twitter, this blockade “means a people deprived of their food sovereignty, or of syringes and medical material for the two vaccines they have developed against Covid-19”.
