Renowned writer, newspaper columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner dies in Spain

Carlos Alberto Montaner, the renowned writer, political commentator and syndicated newspaper columnist whose passion for the freedom of his native Cuba never wavered, died Thursday. He was 80.

“There was not a day in his life that Cuba was not present,” said his daughter, journalist Gina Montaner, from Spain. “My father is a man who defended the freedom to live and die, and he wanted to die with dignity on his terms, and he did.”

Montaner, who suffered from a degenerative disease, died in Madrid, the city that welcomed him in the 1970s along with his wife, Linda, when they were in their twenties, leaving their homeland behind. There he raised his children and found success as a businessman with Firmas Press and Editorial Playor.

In Spain, he witnessed a historic moment that served as a compass for his dream of freedom for Cuba: the transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy.

“It was a great education to see that transition that he always dreamed of for Cuba,” his daughter said. “To see how it was possible to go from great hatred and resentment to a national consensus, to turn the page and reach democracy. “

Cuban activist and academic Sebastián Arcos Cazabón called Montaner “the first of the public and respected figures in exile to support the peaceful opposition” inside Cuba.

“He was the first to [say] they are legitimate and we must support them,” added Arcos Cazabón, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

In the 1980s and 1990s while in Cuba, Arcos Cazabón said, he listened to Montaner on Radio Martí and read the columns that he wrote in el Nuevo Herald.

Montaner managed to inspire several generations of Cuban and Latin American journalists with his ideas, his journalistic style, his accurate and friendly speech and his sense of humor.

“He was a father, a friend, a guide, a person who put his experience and knowledge at the service of all of us,” said journalist and writer Juan Manuel Cao.

Daniel Morcate, a journalist at Univision, praised Montaner for “his lucidity, intellectual honesty and his love for Cuba, for democracy and for freedom.”

Several media outlets in Spain, the United States, and Latin America ran his columns, including el Nuevo Herald, where at one point he was the editor of the opinion section.

“His departure from him is the end of an era of Cuban exile. After the fall of the Soviet empire... we had great hopes of returning to a free Cuba, and we saw him as the ideal president of the nation, in the transition to republican democracy,” said journalist Olga Connor, who once worked for Montaner.

Alex Mena, interim executive editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, highlighted the “great and accurate weekly columns” by Montaner, which ran for more than 40 years.

“With his way of thinking and his extensive knowledge, Montaner analyzed and explained to us how the movements of the world order affect the daily life of those who only want to live in peace,” Mena said. “As a Cuban exile, he was a defender of freedom and democracy, not only in Latin America, but in the world. We will miss his words.”

Montaner wrote more than 20 books, many of them translated into English, Portuguese, Russian and Italian, the Penguin Random House group said in a news release.

Montaner’s family said there will be no funeral services.

In addition to his children Gina and Carlos and his wife Linda, he is survived by his granddaughters Paola, Gabriela and Claudia.