Cuban diplomat José Antonio Arbesú Fraga has died today, at the age of 80, in Cuba. As he warned, Arbesú was always welcoming with the Basque deportees.

The trajectory of the Cuban to the service of the country has been very good. He was a youth ambassador to Egypt, and in the late 1980s he was in South Africa opening negotiations between the apartheid regime and the organization of the African National Congress (AKN). A decade later he was head of the Cuban Interests Section of Washington (equivalent to the Cuban ambassador to the United States) and for many years responsible for the American Department of the Central Commission of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Friend of the deportees

"Arbesú was responsible for housing in Cuba the first Basque deportees left in Panama on May 1, 1984. Since then a great friendship emerged, and during these 36 years, until the last breath, the relationship with the Basques and with the Basque Country has remained intact", stressed the deportees of Cuba and friends of Euskal Herria in a statement.

"The Basque deportees and their friends owe him a great deal, and we will always remember his solidarity and, above all, his friendship with us. A great man was discreetly gone, just as his life had been. Arbes, our friend, Euskal Herria, will know who you were and your model will follow. Always, friend," they add.