14ymedio, Havana, 8 February 2019 — On Wednesday, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, asked Cubans living on the island who also have Spanish citizenship to vote No in the constitutional referendum on 24 February.
“I invite you not only to admire your Spanish passport, but also — as a Cuban — to look at the democracy of that great nation, a democracy that was built with much sacrifice, but in a peaceful way: a nation of Laws.
“You need an urgent change of direction, voting as the government wants you to is to say that everything is going well, and you know that this is not true, so I ask you to dream and demand for your family a democracy and welfare state like that enjoyed by millions of Spaniards,” the OCDH invites this group known on the island as cubañoles.
According to the OCDH, voting No in the referendum would be “the first step” to move towards the enjoyment of “a democracy and a welfare state.”
Alejandro González Raga, executive director of the OCDH and former Cuban political prisoner, shared the message on social networks. The group said that for 60 years, the Communist Party of Cuba has only sown division and misery in a country where young people have no future and the elderly ask, “for how long?”
About 150,000 Cubans have obtained Spanish nationality in the last 10 years as a result of the Law of Historical Memory or “law of the grandchildren” as it is popularly called.
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