MADRID.- Spain today -January 16- granted nationality to the writer Gioconda Belli and 12 other Nicaraguan opponents who were deprived of their citizenship by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, reported the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
“Today the Council of Ministers has granted Spanish nationality to 13 other Nicaraguans stripped of theirs, including Gioconda Belli, with whom I spoke by telephone,” Albares announced on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
“The defenders of democracy and freedom have the support of Spain,” added the minister of the socialist government Pedro Sánchez.
Belli, one of the most recognized Central American writers, was part of the group of more than 300 Nicaraguan opponents whose nationality was stripped by the Ortega dictatorship in February 2023.
Upon learning of the Managua decision, which also affected the writer Sergio Ramírez, exiled like Belli in Spain, the Spanish government offered to naturalize the Nicaraguan opponents stripped of their citizenship. Ramrez obtained Spanish nationality in 2018.
Belli, who has not reacted to the Spanish government’s decision, wrote on Sunday in X. “Exile as a state policy is a symptom of the most illegal and cruel intolerance of the Nicaraguan regime.” “‘Eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel’ is the remedy for their arrogance to ignore how they destroy the democratic spirit and citizens’ rights,” he noted.
Belli, author of eight novels and several collections of poems, won this year the Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, considered the most prestigious award of this genre in Spanish and Portuguese.
FUENTE: AFP
