The Cuban writer, journalist and former political prisoner Carlos Alberto Montaner died this Thursday in Madrid after a long neurodegenerative disease, the family reported in a statement.
Montaner was born in Havana on April 3, 1943. He died “at his home in
peaceful way and accompanied by their loved ones”, the note states.
His wife, Linda, and their children, Gina and Carlos, thanked the medical and palliative care of health professionals in Spain, and those close to the writer for their “affection in the final stretch of a prolific life marked by the defense of individual liberties.” .
Montaner’s last goodbye will be, however, “an intimate and private act”, underlines the note, which quotes the “Prologue for an epilogue” from his book of memoirs, “Without going further“: “The time has come to recapitulate. You have to pack your bags. Disappearing is a thankless activity that is only justified because it is the only irrefutable proof that we have lived.”
Montaner, one of the most recognized Cuban authors worldwide, was also an opponent of the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution that installed socialism in Cuba.
At only 17 years of age, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, from which he managed to escape and take refuge in the Honduran embassy, after which he went into exile. He published more than twenty books, some translated into several languages.
Montaner received, in September 2022, the Francisco Miranda Award for the Defense of Liberty and Democracy in the Americas, awarded by the Inter-American Institute for Democracy.
At the award ceremony, he declared to Marti News that the Cuban regime “has to get used to the idea that it has totally failed and that it has no chance of prevailing.” The participants in the event felt that this celebration had been a farewell.
Last May, Montaner published his last column: “I am retiring without any joy. I am retiring from columnism. My columns, for years, were distributed by my closest collaborator, Lucía Guerra. I have turned 80. I suffer Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. The name says it all,” he wrote.
Montaner could no longer “converse well” or “read beyond the headlines”, but he continued to write until almost the end of his life as he had done for “more than half a century” in his weekly column.
As he himself said, he had the opportunity to write for the best newspapers in Latin America, Spain and the United States. He was a collaborator of Radio Martí and one of the founders in 1985.
In September 2022, Radio Martí presented him with an award in gratitude for his contribution to the Office of Broadcasting to Cuba (OCB), and his dedication to the “mission of promoting democracy and freedom in Cuba, by providing the Cuban people with objective information”.
