EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 3 February 2022 — The Cuban government said this Tuesday that it is willing to “find a solution” with respect to the Spanish news agency EFE, after limiting the work of most of its journalists on the island.
The International Press Center (CPI) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thus responded on Twitter to the statements made the day before by the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, in which he asked that Efe be able to operate in Cuba as it works in Spain.
The CPI stressed that EFE “continues to work with absolute freedom in Cuba,” but demanded “unrestricted respect” for its constitutional order “for the exercise of objective, truthful, impartial and non-biased journalism.”
The Cuban authorities withdrew the accreditations of all EFE personnel in Havana last November without justifying their decision and returned only two journalists’ credentials later.
Of the seven journalists that Efe had in Cuba at the beginning of the year, currently only two can work, one of whom is required to renew their accreditation monthly.
In addition, the new head of the delegation, appointed in July, has not yet received their press visa and has not been able to enter the country.
The Cuban organization that manages the international media in the country also stressed “that it has been in permanent conversations with the directors of Efe and the Embassy of Spain” throughout this situation.
Albares said this Monday that “everyone, including the Cuban authorities,” are interested in the EFE agency being able to continue working in Cuba, which is why Spain continues to request that the withdrawn accreditations be restored.
“I think that all of us, including the Cuban authorities, have an interest in EFE being able to continue working from Cuba and not from other places,” he stressed in his speech at the Senate’s Ibero-American Affairs committee.
The foreign minister added that the ministry is “fighting so that Efe stays in Cuba, and for it to stay in Cuba they have to let it work just like it works in Spain.”
At the beginning of January, the president of Efe, Gabriela Cañas, affirmed that the agency did not want to leave Cuba and would not leave on its own initiative, but that the decisions of the Cuban authorities are forcing her to rethink her stay in the country.
Cañas stressed that both the agency and the Spanish authorities believe that “EFE should be” in Cuba, where it has been for 50 years and has one of the largest offices of an international media outlet on the island, and stressed that half of the news about Cuba that are published in Latin America come from Efe offices.
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