A few days after the trial for espionage against former Economy Minister Alejandro Gil concluded, the regime's silence contrasts with the testimonies starting to emerge from abroad.
Her sister, María Victoria Gil, former presenter of Cuban Television, has once again broken the information blockade and revealed a fact that strikes on both a personal and political level, confirming that Alejandro Gil could have become a Spanish citizen but chose not to.
In an interview with journalist Mario J. Pentón from Martí Noticias, the sister of the former Minister of Economy and Planning, ousted in February 2024, shared that both were entitled to Spanish citizenship due to their four Galician grandparents. She regularized her status and tried to convince him to do the same. Gil's response was definitive.
Brother, take advantage of the fact that I have all the documentation so you can also become a Spanish citizen,” he said. “I don’t need it. I live in Cuba, I am happy, I would give my life for my country and I don’t need to be Spanish,” was the response of the then vice prime minister.
That decision, made before his fall, now weighs heavily on the entire family. His children, María Victoria asserts, can no longer benefit from the Law of Democratic Memory, which leaves them bound to Cuba while their father faces charges that could lead to life imprisonment. “They will have to stay in Cuba,” she lamented.
The revelations do not end there. According to the sister, “very reliable” sources confirmed to her that the regime accuses Gil of spying for the CIA, something she describes as absurd and which the former minister asserts, “categorically denies, point by point” since the beginning of the investigations. She also claims that her lawyer's defense was “brilliant.”
Another point of human impact in his testimony is the timeline of the former minister's downfall, citing Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero at the center of his family's misfortune.
The sister asserts that, after several summons and document submissions, Gil and his wife were taken to an operational house of the Ministry of the Interior, where they stayed for four months. She believed it was all “a big circus” until she learned that he was later transferred to the maximum-security prison in Guanajay, where he only receives visits of 15 minutes every 15 days.
María Victoria points to Marrero as the main executor of the process: “He is the person who has been at the forefront and behind all of this.” And although Díaz-Canel is often publicly criticized, she claims that the leader “did not know anything” about the investigation, which, if true, would depict a leader uninformed within his own circle.
"She won't escape life imprisonment," said the sister, convinced that the sentence has already been written.
Amid official silences and familiar voices that dare to speak from afar, Alejandro Gil's story reveals not only the internal brutality of power in Cuba but also the intimate tragedy of an official who could have left yet chose to stay.
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