MADRID.— Isolated in Europe and despised in Latin America, precisely for his submission to U.S. President George W. Bush, the outgoing president of the Spanish government, José María Aznar, has once again attacked Cuba – an obvious action given that he is in Washington – and expressed his support for the unjustified U.S. war in Iraq.

In a speech to the U.S. Congress this Wednesday – described in Madrid as "humiliating for Spain" – Aznar unscrupulously defended the bloody military aggression of Iraq by the White House, and was unable to conceal his profound hatred for Cuba, evidently inherited from his colonialist ancestors.

Of course, barely 50 representatives and senators – the majority of them Republicans – out of a total of 535, were present for the Spanish ally’s speech in the House of Representatives. The rest of the chamber was filled with members and invited guests of the Spanish delegation, Congress scholarship students and the Congress media. Bush compensated for the meager representation by sending Secretary of State Colin Powell and another three members of his cabinet to protect the visitor, according to several Spanish newspapers this Thursday.

At the same time, the dailies have commented on the fact that Aznar’s speech sparked little interest in the U.S. media.

Journalists and the political media in Madrid believe that the current Spanish parliamentary leader would like to see U.S. aggression against Cuba and the island returned to what it was when the Spanish handed it over to the United States at the end of the 19th century.

Sources agree that this European leader would like to see his ancestors’ history repeat itself, while overlooking what happened at that time, when the Cubans defeated the Spanish army and some years later liberated themselves from the dictatorial regimes imposed by Washington years later through the 1959 Revolution.