MADRID.— Celebrated author and Nobel Literature Prize winner José Saramago recently announced that he has "not broken his ties with Cuba", but in Spain very few people are aware of this fact because, quite simply, the authorities have preferred to silence the news in this European country.

Contrary to what happened a few months ago, when Saramago’s phrase "I was with Cuba up to this point" traveled from one end of Europe to the other, particularly throughout the Iberian Peninsula, this latest statement from the Nobel Prize winner – made just a few days ago – merited no comment whatsoever.

Furthermore, there are still individuals quoting the "I was with Cuba up to this point " statement thus, of course, ignoring Saramago’s recent declaration that he has not broken off relations with the Caribbean island.

All of my compatriots know for example, that José María Aznar, president of the Spanish government, is soon to be a grandfather and recently received an award in New York for being "a defender of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression and the press." Indeed, this trilogy has been repeated a thousand and one times by those who start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but say nothing about the prisoners being held, without due process on the illegal naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba.

Where is the freedom of expression, if they don’t even respect the declarations of a Nobel Prize winner, made in Lanzarote, one of the islands in the Spanish Canaries, and that was circulated in Mexico, Cuba and other Latin American countries?

Ah! Of course, the so-called "dissidents" in Cuba, encouraged and paid by the United States and several European governments, are well known in Spain because, according to what they say here, "they are fighting for freedom of expression and the press."

Meanwhile, five Cubans who are imprisoned in U.S. jails, after being the victims of rigged trials in Miami, Florida purely for defending their country from the continuous terrorist aggression planned from U.S. territory, are being denied their human rights as well as freedom of expression and the press. Little or nothing is said about these Cuban patriots in European media channels.

This being the case, what then and where is the freedom of expression and the press? Can only those chosen by the United States and Europe have access to these concepts? And what do the rest have the right to? To be manipulated or silenced?