The former leader of Podemos and former Vice President of the Spanish Government Pablo Iglesias published on Monday a fragment of his interview with the Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel on his X account.
The interview will be broadcast soon on Canal Red América Latina and covers various topics about Cuba, but the clip chosen by Iglesias to promote the work highlights the segment where he asked about the 32 Cuban soldiers who died during Operation Absolute Resolution on January 3, 2026, in Caracas.
"I asked Miguel Díaz-Canel about the Cubans who fell in battle defending Nicolás Maduro. I was impressed by his emotion in the response," wrote Iglesias while sharing the clip. In the video, he adds: "This is not the first time that Cubans protect political leaders from other countries. I would like to ask you for a few words about those men."
It referred to earlier cases in history, such as the presence of Cuban military personnel alongside President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, the day of the coup in Chile and his death.
Díaz-Canel avoided going into details about the history and focused his epic narrative starting from the early morning of January 3, 2026, when he received the first news about what happened in Venezuela. He described that initial news as "very inaccurate" until the death of the 32 military personnel was confirmed.
He immediately summoned leaders of the Communist Party to the Palace of the Revolution to organize support for Venezuela and to internationally denounce what he described as a "totally brutal and illegal aggression." He did not mention a word about other occasions when Cuba has provided security for presidents of other countries.
The Cuban leader described with an emotional tone the march in front of the United States embassy in Havana, held when the remains of the fallen were returned.
"I arrived with some family members and other coworkers at nine-thirty at the anti-imperialist tribune. It was overflowing, Pablo. The crowd was passionate; the people had a very strong feeling," stated Díaz-Canel.
The mobilization was organized by the regime and participation was demanded from the workers, even though the country was already in a fuel crisis and lacking resources.
"What was parading was not a defeated people; it was a resolute people, reaffirming their conviction," Díaz-Canel added.
The ruler referred to the 32 soldiers as "heroes" and asserted that, "facing numerical disadvantages, technological disadvantages, and disadvantages of all kinds," they managed to complicate the operation of the Delta Force.
The Cuban regime published identities and photographs of the fallen, including Colonels Humberto Alfonso Roca Sánchez and Lázaro Evangelio Rodríguez Rodríguez, and Major Ismael Terrero Ge, aged between 26 and 67 years old. This acknowledgment contradicted decades of official denials by the regime regarding its military presence in Venezuela.
Operation Absolute Resolution was carried out by about 200 Delta Force soldiers with the support of 150 aircraft and culminated in the capture of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores at Fuerte Tiuna, Caracas, to be transferred to New York.
The remains of the 32 Cuban soldiers returned to the island on January 15 for state funerals, following a two-day national mourning decree by Díaz-Canel.
Pablo Iglesias recently visited Havana with the Convoy Nuestra América, an initiative organized by Progressive International that brought together around 650 people from 33 countries under the slogan "Cuba is not alone."
Among the participants were also former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Colombian Senator Clara López, activist Hasan Piker, and the Irish rap group Kneecap.
During his early days in Havana, Iglesias downplayed the Cuban crisis, describing it as “certainly difficult, but not as it is being portrayed from the outside,” remarks that sparked a wave of criticism from Cubans both on the island and abroad.
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