Spain's newly elected government may be less friendly to Cuba
The new Conservative government that won Sunday's elections in Spain may
be less friendly to Cuba, analysts say.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Relations between Cuba and Spain may be headed for choppy waters after
Spain's conservative Popular Party won elections Sunday, although
analysts say neither side is primarily interested in picking a mayor fight.
The PP victory ended nearly eight years of rule by the Spanish Socialist
Workers' Party (PSOE), often criticized as too friendly to Havana's
communist rulers and insensitive to their human rights abuses.
Asked last week about Cuba, Mariano Rajoy, PP leader and Spain's next
prime minister, declared, "I want democracy. I want freedom. I want
human rights. Well, not just me. The whole world wants that."
Yet his party's campaign platform barely mentioned Cuba or leftist
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and his speeches on the stump focused
largely on Spain's tough economic crisis and its 20 percent jobless rate.
What's more, bilateral commerce hit more than $1 billion last year and
more than 200 Spanish companies have significant investments in the
Caribbean island, many of them in the growing tourism sector.
"I would doubt very much that Cuba would become a priority or even an
important issue" for Rajoy, said Joaquin Roy, a Spaniard who heads the
European Union Center at the University of Miami. "He has many other
concerns."
"I also don't believe that Raúl (Castro) and his people would have any
interest in starting something with the new Spanish government. Raúl
also has other important things to do," added Roy.
Castro is in the midst of a politically risky campaign to overhaul
Cuba's feeble economy by chopping back public spending, allowing more
private enterprise and attracting more foreign investments.
Cuba's government-controlled news media on Monday reported Rajoy's
victory relatively straight-forward, not attacking the PP but noting
that the PSOE lost because it wandered away from its socialist principles.
Yet others argue that turbulence in bilateral relations would be
inevitable if Rajoy tries to put even slightly stronger pressure on the
traditionally thin-skinned Cuban government to improve its human rights
record.
"It will not be easy for the Popular Party to carry out a minimally
cordial relationship … due to the Castros' historical predisposition
against any government that questions them," noted the blog Diario de
Cuba (Cuban Diary).
One point of conflict could be Castro's harsh anti-corruption campaign,
which already has put several foreign businessmen in jail. A Spanish
lawyer who represents several enterprises with offices in Havana said
some of his clients are concerned that now they will be singled out for
investigations.
Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said Spain's policy toward
Cuba under the PP must change "because lamentably, the policy designed
by the (PSOE) government … failed."
Under outgoing PSOE Primer Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain
persuaded the 27-nation European Union to lift the sanctions imposed on
Cuba after it jailed 75 peaceful dissidents in 2003.
But it failed in several attempts to push the EU to lift its "Common
Position," adopted in 1996 to link EU relations with Havana to Cuba's
human rights record.
Zapatero also agreed to receive about 115 political prisoners and
hundreds of their relatives, released over the past year by Castro after
unprecedented talks with Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega, and increased
cultural and academic exchanges.
Rajoy's government should now retain "the positive elements of the
people-to-people exchanges," Diario de Cuba added, and adopt a new
"manifest solidarity toward the internal dissidence and respect for exiles."
Dissident Guillermo Fariñas said he was "very happy" with Rajoy's
victory and hoped Spain would provide more assistance to the Cuban
opposition, as it did under Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, a Popular
Party member defeated by the PSOE in 2004.
The PSOE government was "an accomplice of the Cuban dictatorship,"
Fariñas added by telephone from his home in Cuba.
In Miami, the Cuban American National Foundation said the Spanish
embassy in Havana should quickly start allowing Cuban dissidents to use
its Internet facilities so they can communicate with the outside world.
Ladies in White leader Berta Soler praised the embassy for its warm
treatment of dissidents under Zapatero, but added that she hoped that
under Rajoy it would return to the even better levels of the Aznar
government.
"That was a government that truly saw and watched over the problems that
exist in Cuba," Soler added, "with the Cubans on the streets, with the
opposition groups, with the human rights groups."
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