The exiled Cuban writer and journalist, Carlos Alberto Montaner, died last Friday at his home in Madrid. Montaner suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a degenerative disease.
“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 moment, before I was informed of a more severe diagnosis, I came to the conclusion that I would not allow the Parkinson‘s that I had suffered for a few years to take away any more of my faculties. 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. This is how part of the text of a letter that the renowned writer wrote and that was published this Monday in various media around the world reads.
His letter, the last to his readers, began by saying: “When you read this article I will be dead” and went on to talk about the last chapters of his life story with the intention, he made clear, of stimulating worldwide debate. about euthanasia. “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 responded kindly, with a smile, and continued on my way. After all, I lived 40 years in Madrid, my intention was to live again in my apartment in front of El Retiro park. I have Spanish nationality and I firmly believe in euthanasia and assisted death, as, fortunately, more than 70% of the Spanish people do”.
The Spanish Congress approved the Euthanasia Law in March 2021
“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”, Montaner wrote.
He explained that since he returned to Madrid he delivered a document to the Public Health Department establishing health care and treatment in extreme situations and from the beginning he received advice from the Right to Die with Dignity Association (DMD). In addition, he said that he always had the support of his family. “He said goodbye on June 29 as he wished”, wrote his daughter Gina Montaner.
“I have lived in a country, Spain, for 40 years, at the western end of Europe, of which it was said, unfairly, 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 so while still enjoying the ability to express my will to exercise my right to end my life in a free and dignified manner in accordance with my beliefs. I don’t bother you anymore, dearreader. Byebye”.
