Exiled Cubans Living in Spain Feel Abandoned as Benefits Dry Up

Exiled Cubans Living in Spain Feel Abandoned as Benefits Dry Up


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Laura Leon for the International Herald Tribune
Ricardo González Alfonso, riding a subway train in Madrid, was among the first former dissidents to arrive in the city.
By RAPHAEL MINDER
Published: June 1, 2012[/font]

MADRID — After Spain negotiated their freedom from prison nearly two years ago, 115 Cuban dissidents landed here expressing gratitude for the chance to start anew in a country that seemed full of promise. Spaniards, too, were proud of what many considered to be a diplomatic masterstroke and a sign that Spain had taken its place as a player on the global stage alongside its larger European Union counterparts and even the United States.

Fast-forward and today many of the same Cubans are protesting again — this time, over the precarious living conditions in their adopted country, a lack of jobs and their loss of subsidies from a now cash-strapped Spanish government. One, Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández, grew so despondent about his circumstances, according to his wife and friends, that he committed suicide in April.

The turnaround has proved an embarrassment for Spain, and underscored its profound and sudden transformation from what once seemed a land of opportunity to one of Europe’s worst economies, as the country slogs through a banking crisis and recession and as it struggles to avert a Greek-style bailout.

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Some of the Cubans have held protests in downtown Madrid, as well as in other cities like Málaga, to demand that their government support payments be extended, and critics and opponents of the government have accused it of abandoning the former dissidents.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/europe/exiled-cubans-living-in-spain-feel-abandoned-as-benefits-dry-up.html?partner=rss&emc=rss