SLP, Mexico.- The Pantheon of the Asturian family emigrated to Cuba Álvarez Suárez, once owned by a hotel, a hardware store and a cane colony-all the bell-is called the bell-is right at the entrance of the municipal cemetery in Puerto Padre. There, together with his parents, the firstborn, Francisquito, expropriated merchant who was – for work and grace of destiny – the last fellow student of the general is buried Raúl Castro that still lived.
Francisco Ramón Álvarez Suárez, Francisquito, He died At the age of 93 on December 2, due to respiratory complications derived from a flu state. “The natural death of an old man,” a doctor friend of both would tell me.
“If I die first, that my death does not call yours. The day I die do not publish anything until after one or two months, lest also say, ‘look, the last one of Dolores is calling it, ”he told me, half jokingly and half seriously, after June 2011 will interview it for Diary of Cuba On the occasion of the 80th birthday of Raúl Castro.
Back in the forties of the last century, four adolescents from families with Catholic faith slept in the same room at the Dolores school, in Santiago de Cuba: Raúl Castro, Jorge Serguera, Ramiro Puentes and Francisco Álvarez. While the first two became communist revolutionaries, Ramiro, in Victoria de las Tunas and Francisquito in Puerto, finished high school and worked on their parents’ businesses until they were expropriated; Jorge Serguera, who died in Havana, in 1959 had the “merit” of being the prosecutor of the commander Huber Matos; and Ramiro Puentes, exiled in the United States, died in a traffic accident.
Of those who were bedroom and classroom companions in the Dolores Collegeonly two contemporaries lived, Raúl Castro, born in Birán on June 3, 1931, and Francisquito, just a younger month because he was born in Puerto Padre on July 1 of the year 1931.
FrancisquitoCuban-Spanish citizen and who voted for José María Aznar, Mariano Rajoy, to the PP, did not emigrate to Spain or the United States, where he had his two daughters and other relatives and many friends, but ended up retirement in a bakery , in which he carried accounting.
He did not maintain personal relationships with Raúl Castro, although on one occasion he sent one of his assistants to be interested in him, after receiving the photographs of the School Dolores who had asked him: “Very kind, but no, I have no problems”, It was his answer; Although yes, he had difficulties, because they did not properly compensate expropriated goods, and the eldest daughter, then died in the United States, had been expelled from the university for “ideological fun”, a case for which Francisquito required my help through My father, in the 1980s. Fortunately, we managed to prove legally, with witnesses, the falsehood of the accusations and that the young woman graduated as an engineer.
No, I published nothing about his death as I say now … Goodbye, Francisquito, because premonitorily he asked me, and I say it was premonitory because it would have been very badly for General Raúl Castro in a day of celebration for him and his clan -For what also approaches its final day-, knowing that on December 2, called in Cuba “Revolutionary Armed Forces Day”, he had died at age 93 because of a simple flu, Francisco Álvarez Suárez , the one who accompanied him to play balls.
