2023-07-04 13:02:59
Cuban writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner passed away this Thursday at his home in the city of Madrid at the age of 80, following suffering a neurodegenerative disease rare. Over the decades, his work has been distinguished by different institutions and he had to go into exile from his country because of his opposition to the Cuban revolution that he has governed for decades.
Highlander, who was a correspondent for various international media such as CNNwhere he also served as an analyst and commentator, suffered from progressive supranuclear palsya disease that occurs due to damage to brain cells and affects different functions, such as walking controleye movements and thinking.
His death was known this Friday, following being confirmed by his family. “In his name, his wife Linda, his children Gina and Carlos and his granddaughters Paola, Gabriela and Claudia thank the professionals of the Spanish public healthto the Right to Die with Dignity Association and to all the relatives and friends who have expressed so much affection in the final stretch of a prolific life marked by the defense of individual liberties,” they said in a statement.
The Cuban writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner, opponent of Cuban socialism, died
Due to his illness, the journalist and essayist had moved his residence to Spain, since as a result of his work he spent more time in Miami.
But before dying, the journalist born on April 3, 1943 in Havana, left a posthumous letter that he headed by saying: “When you read this article, I will be dead,” where he reveals details regarding his final decision.
The posthumous letter of Carlos Alberto Montaner
When you read this article I will be dead. “Living is a right, not an obligation,” said Ramón Sampedro, a Spaniard who had become a quadriplegic following an accident on the beach. His life, his fight for him to be allowed access to the assisted suicide and his death were interpreted in the cinema by Javier Bardem in the film “Into the sea”.
“Don Carlos, are you going back to live in Spain?” asked a strange neighbor from Brickell Avenue, where he lived in Miami. “No. I’m going to die in Spain”, I replied kindly, with a smile, and went on my way. After all, I lived 40 years in Madrid, my intention was to live once more in my apartment in front of El Retiro park, I have Spanish nationality and I firmly believe in the euthanasia and in the assisted dyingas, fortunately, he thinks more than 70% of the Spanish.
I started writing this article in Miami at the beginning of 2022 and I conclude it by dictating it, since I currently have great difficulties writing. At that point, before I was informed of a more severe diagnosis, I came to the conclusion that I would not allow the parkinson that I had been suffering from for a few years took away more faculties from me. By then, I had already lost the ability to improvise orally, but not the ability to write. It seems that the brain houses the two faculties in different places. In any case, everything would get worse.
In March 2021, the Spanish Congress of Deputies approved the “Euthanasia Law” by 202 votes in favor, 141 once morest and 2 abstentions. It is one of the countries that has it – in the US there is assisted suicide, but only in 10 states and the District of Columbia out of the 50 that the American Union has. Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Portugal and Canada have legislated on euthanasia and assisted dying. It’s little. There are almost 200 nations recognized by the United Nations Organization.
On April 3, 22, he had turned 79 in Miami. It was the age at which my father died of heart disease on March 7, 1992. My mother died at the age of 83 from a “minor” operation (except for her, of course) in the year 2000. According to the admired Italian neurologist Rita Levi -Montalcini, Nobel Prize in Medicine (1986), the children, roughly, they must calculate how long they expect to live by averaging the age at death of the two parents, but adding 10%, as a result of medical advancess. I was 88 years old. It’s too much. I think starting the eighth inning, as my friend Jorge Sonville says, is more than enough. It’s quite a provocation.
My younger brother, Robert Alex, a brilliant physician with whom I discussed the Levi-Montalcini formula, was skeptical of this hypothesis. He argued, with good reason, that those averages didn’t help much. He, my younger brother, died at the age of 69 in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic. His death occurred on August 1, 2020. There was no vaccine then. I was almost eight years older than him. But my older brother, born in October 1940, Ernesto, is still alive. Of the three, he is the most resistant to life’s adversities.
The purpose of this article is to stimulate the debate on euthanasia: my position is to support it as long as it is a voluntary choice. In the same way that organs are donated while alive, I think it would be enough to put it in writing or designate a person to make the decisions in the event that it is materially impossible to assume that responsibility. This is how, when I arrived in Madrid in October of last year, I handed over to the Public Health Department the document establishing health care and treatment in extreme situations. Thanks to the advice from the beginning of the Association Right to Die with Dignity (DMD) I have been able, with the unconditional support of my loved ones, overcome all the bureaucratic steps required by a guarantee law. In this way, I began the legal process that has culminated in the approval of the provision of aid to die in my case, since, in accordance with what is established by the Law, I meet all the requirements of suffering grave, chronic e impossible. Until the end of the road I count on the assistance of Public Health professionals.
As if that were not enough, an MRI carried out at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital concluded that I actually suffer from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), an atypical and more aggressive Parkinson’s. That explains my accelerated lack of eye movement, preventing me from reading and writing, in addition to the increasing limitations to express myself verbally. My daily life, in which reading, writing and oral expression have been my hallmarks, are erased from one day to the next. My body hasn’t been with me for a long time.
I have lived in a country, Spain, for 40 years, in the far west of Europe, regarding which it was unfairly said that the Spanish only understood with whips. And it wasn’t true. Democracy and freedom are within the reach of any people who propose it. I have returned in the twilight of my life. Here I have turned 80 years old. The last of my existence thanks to the Euthanasia Law. Do you want greater freedom than choosing the moment of departure?
I fulfill my wish to die in Madrid, the city that I love and in which I have shared so much with Linda, my beloved wife through thick and thin. I do it still enjoying the ability to express my will, to exercise my right to end my life in a free and dignified way according to my beliefs. I don’t bother you anymore, dear reader. Bye bye.
(©FIRMAS PRESS)
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