CUBA-SPAIN: Close on Business, Split on Politics

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 14 1997 (IPS) - A new diplomatic spat between Cuba and Spain over an upsetting invitation to a parliamentary meeting appear to show that while it is business as usual, the two nations’ politics are drifting ever further apart.

The episode, and its ratification in Spanish Parliament Wednesday, was just one more on a list of misunderstandings, credit suspensions and personal attacks which have marked bilateral relations since Jose Maria Aznar came to power a year ago.

Spain’s Parliament, organising the VIII Conference of Democratic Iberoamerican Parliamentary Presidents, to be held in Madrid on March 39 and 30, invited Cuban parliament to participate as an observer, but not as a full member.

The Spanish move provoked a heated protest from the Havana government. Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuban Parliament, rejected the invitation, stating the country had been free of Spanish colonialism for nearly 100 years and was threfor “no longer subject to the whims of its Parliament.”

In a letter directed to the leaders of Spain’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate, Alarcon warned that Cuba is a “Latin American and Iberoamerican nation (a condition) which should not be ignored or undermined by anybody.”

Cuba was a founder member of the Iberoamerican Community of nations and attended other meetings of this type in Uruguay (1987), Bolivia (1988) and Portugal (1991) as a full member.

Parliamentary sources in Madrid, however, pointed out that Havana had not been invited to the conference in 1986 here, something which had caused a diplomatic storm at the time when Castro called then head of Congress, Felix Pons, a “facscist” and a “reactionary.”

“In the Sucre conference, in 1988, the funcional norms were set for these meetings so that no host country should take on the right to decide who participates and who doesn’t,” said Lazaro Barredo, from Cuba’s Parliamentary International Relations Commission.

Parliament qualified the decision to exclude Cuba as “a slap in the face for the Latin American community, when Spain has awarded itself the right to decide who is democratic and who is not.”

“Today we are being excluded and tomorrow it could be any other country of our America,” said Barredo, stating the present decision was creating “a dangerous precedent.”

Local analysts said Spain was using its position as host country in an attempt to isolate Cuba from the Iberoamerican community as part of the pressure to achieve changes in Cuba’s political system.”

Last year, Madrid joined the other members of the European Union in an effort to put diplomatic and political pressure on Havana to establish a representative democracy on the island.

Eduardo Menem, leader of the Argentine Senate, currently on an official visit to Havana, described the Spanish decision as “unfair” and “discriminatory” stating that Cuba must participate in these meetings on an equal footing with the other Latin American countries.

However, a communique from Spain’s lower house assured all efforts had been made to find some way to permit Cuban participation as “the status of observer neither limits nor reduces its capacity to act in any way.”

The discrepancies between the two countries reached a high point last November when the Cuban government made the new Spanish ambassador, Jose Coderch, ‘persona non grata’ when he made what they understood to be declarations beyond his diplomatic functions.

The post of ambassador to Cuba is still empty, and diplomatic sources said there was no possibility of a replacement being named for the time being.

Another diplomatic crisis sprouted March when Spain’s foreign minister, Abel Matutes, accused Cuba of not providing protection for foreigners arriving on the island during a television interview.

This accusation, based on a traffic accident involving a Spanish citizen who was then prevented from leaving the country, was strongly rejected by his Cuban counterpart, Roberto Robaina, who launched a purely personal attack.

Meanwhile, in January, Aznar’s government cancelled a 15 million dollar credit line to the island granted in 1995 for the purchase of industrial goods from Spain, a fundamental element for the sugar industry.

In May last year, Matutes announced the government intention to suspend all soft loans to the island and to limit cooperation to humanitarian aid for health and education programmes.

But while the government to government cooperation projects may vacillate, trade between the two countries and Spanish investments in the island will be maintained, for “this is an issue between private individuals,” he added.

Spain broke several commitments signed during the term of Socialist leader Felipe Gonzalez when it closed the cooperation funds, put the brakes on the opening of an additional military clause and cancelled the credit of the Argentario banking group.

But at the same time, it became the island’s second most important trade partner with bilateral trade worth 266 million dollars last year, a figure only outdone by Russia.

In 1992, Madrid was only sixth on Havana’s business partner list, with bilateral trade worth 200 million dollars.

Official sources in Cuba stated that more than 120 companies are represented in Cuba and that Spanish capital is present in around 50 of the 260 or so economic associations on the island.

A group of 12 industrialists arrived in Barcelona in April, meeting with 85 Cuban companies, making several agreements and business deals opening the way for greater trade between the island and the 1,600 members of the Llobregat Anoia Entrepreneurs Association.

“The various demonstrations towards Cuba made by Spanish officials lead us to predict there were political motivations in the most recent Spanish decisions taken in relation to our country,” said Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, Ricardo Cabrisas.

As a rule the Spanish entrepreneurs on the island have kept quiet over the political contradictions between Havana and Madrid and they concentrate on defending their economic interests, falling back on the old formula that “business is business.”

However, local experts estimate that one process cannot be totally separated from the other and that, however much good or ill will actually exists, President Aznar’s policy towards Cuba could end up affecting Spanish interests on the island.