HOWEVER, it is not only Spain that is under suspicion. The scandal over stopovers in Spanish airports by planes used by the CIA to transport prisoners and engage in torture is barely subsiding, and once again they are landing in Madrid. This time, however, they are transferring a group of Cuban-born mercenaries and some Latin Americans who are traveling to Spain to backstab Spanish investors doing business with Cuba. They are the men of the Group for Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba (GCSRC), a type of pro-Helms-Burton Act legionnaires.

The questions emerge. Is this the first time that that type of CIA landing has occurred in Madrid? No. They did so before in April 2005. What is it about, then? According to an April 6, 2005 article published on Cubaencuentro, the website of the Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana Association — generously financed by the CIA through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the GCSRC was promoted by the Miami-based Federation of Electrical Plant Workers (FSPEGA).

In any case, who are these people from Miami promoting the GCSRC and why did they decide to use Madrid as the location for their maneuvers? They are a gang of self-acknowledged terrorists, financed and utilized by the U.S. intelligence agency since the 1960s in actions against Cuba. One example is Calixto Campos, currently vice president of the FSPEGA and editor of the magazine that those supposed trade union activists publish, who wrote: "Just as we defend the Council, we hope that it respects other methods of struggle that the combatant exile movement has been waging for more than 30 years together with patriots on the island, given that we are supporters of the armed struggle, which we have participated in for many years and are not willing to abandon, even though we know it is difficult because we no longer have the support of our traditional friends, who are now persecuting us and jailing us, calling us vulgar terrorists, when before we were patriots, and it was they who educated us in terrorism."

A second example, with confession: In No. 353 of the magazine Lux, its June-September 1999 edition, an article by its editor, Calixto Campos, titled "A little history," states, "Right from the start, the electrical workers, part of our glorious Federation of Electrical, Gas and Water Plants, have been confronting the communist regime of Fidel Castro. Here are some of the main events. November 30, 1960: As a result of bombs planted in the offices of the Cuban Electric Company by the 30th of November Movement, a large part of the city of Havana was thrown into darkness, with electric current absent from certain neighborhoods for more than 24 hours. The offices where the bombs were placed and exploded were those located on Diaria and Aguila streets; Zulueta and San José; San José and Consulado; Galiano between Neptuno and Concordia; Enna and Justicia; Antón Recio between Diaria and Puerta Cerrada; Alambique between Vives and Esperanza; Concordia # 153 and Santa Emilia 24. December 27, 1960: In the building at No. 666 Carlos III Street, occupied mostly by the main offices of the Cuban Electric company, a powerful bomb exploded in the basement (...) later, two powerful bombs were found in the Tallapiedra Plant."

It is no coincidence that these same Cuban-American terrorists who are now in Madrid, wholeheartedly approved the kidnapping in the United States of the Cuban boy Elián González in 1999, and that they subsequently carried out violent street protests, blocking traffic in front of the Port of Miami after the U.S. government, enforcing a court ruling, decided that the child should be returned to Cuba in the company of his father in 2000.

And the burning question? Who is financing the FSPEGA and the GCSRC? The same outfit that openly financed them in the ‘60s: the U.S. intelligence services. The only difference now is that they are doing it under the fig leaf of what they’ve called the National Endowment for Democracy. Suffice it to say that the U.S. government, via the NED, gave the FSPEGA $78,000 during the 2004 fiscal year. And as if that weren’t enough, during the 2005 fiscal year, it increased the funds, and used a much more complex operation to try to launder CIA funds: the NED lent itself to channeling $177,696 to the FSPEGA and $213,108 to finance the GRSCC, from the U.S. State Department’s so-called Special Fund for Cuba. You must agree with me that we are in the presence of poor and authentic individuals.

This past February 21, the U.S. Radio Martí station reported that the GCSRC was planning to celebrate its second conference in Madrid in early May. According to the station, on this occasion, they will discuss possible juridical responsibilities of investors in Cuba and the regime before the courts and other legal authorities. In other words, it’s a way of saying that their legionnaires are once again landing in Madrid, this time disposed to brandish Titles 3 and 4 of the draconian Helms-Burton Act to try to frighten the Melía Cohíba and other Spanish businesses with investments on the island.

After all, it is something that the U.S. government has tried to do in various ways since passing the Torricelli Act in 1992 and subsequently the Helms-Burton in 1996. It’s worth recalling that during that decade, when they thought the collapse of the Cuban Revolution was a matter of days, and Jorge Mas Canosa and Carlos Alberto Montaner were mounting presidential election campaigns, the two signed and sent veiled and open threats to Spanish business people with investments in Cuba, stating what would happen to them in the post-Castro period. Hence, what we have today is the same collar with different dogs.