Army General Raul Castro sent flowers to the wake of his former sister-in-law Mirta Díaz-Balart, who passed away this Saturday at the age of 95 in the Spanish capital.
"With profound emotion, I convey the warmest and most sincere thanks to my dear great-uncle Raúl, who, with his customary greatness and human sensitivity, sent precious flowers to his soul sister, my grandmother Mirta," wrote Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, son of Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart "Fidelito" (who committed suicide in 2018) with the Russian citizen Olga Smirnova."
In the images posted, an offering can also be seen in the name of the Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Mirta Díaz-Balart Gutiérrez, who was the first wife of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and mother of his oldest son, died this Saturday at the age of 95 in Madrid.
She was born in Havana on September 30, 1928, the daughter of a wealthy Cuban politician.
She was studying Philosophy at the University of Havana when she met Fidel, a Law School student and student leader. They got married in 1948 against the opposition of her family, who nevertheless financed the wedding. They spent their honeymoon in Miami and New York.
In 1949, Fidelito was born, the couple's only child. They got divorced in 1955, when Fidel was exiled in Mexico. She retained sole custody of the child.
In 1956, Mirta married lawyer Emilio Núñez Blanco, who came from a family loyal to Fulgencio Batista and was the son of a former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Emilio Núñez Portuondo.
A report from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo from 2016 recounts that when Fidel found out about the wedding, he had his son sent to Mexico under the excuse of wanting to say goodbye to him, just in case he died in his political struggles. However, once there, he was forcibly detained. Finally, Núñez Portuondo himself rescued Fidelito.
After the triumph of the revolution, in 1968 Mirta and her husband, parents of two daughters, Mirta and América Silvia, definitively left for Spain, while Fidelito was sent to study in the Soviet Union.
Emilio, a staunch opponent of Castroism, collaborated with several newspapers in Miami. She, on the other hand, maintained a discreet profile throughout her life and never appeared in the media, nor did she speak about her past or her relationship with Fidel.
"He never spoke ill or well of Fidel, he never spoke. Even for those of us who knew his past, it was unmentionable, perhaps because he wanted to erase that page from his existence," revealed a close friend to El Mundo.
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