HAVANA -- (AP) -- Spain treats Cuba like a ``slave nation,'' a senior Cuban official declared Thursday, as construction workers backed by police blocked streets around Spain's colonial-style embassy for a third day.
Only a few people on specific business were allowed through the cordon of hundreds that ringed the embassy.
Foreign ministry spokesman Miguel Alfonso said the government-organized workers ringing the embassy were there to protect it after dozens of people tried to force their way into the building Tuesday and Wednesday. Rumors had spread through the city that Spain would grant visas to those wishing to leave Cuba.
Cuba's parliament president, Ricardo Alarcon, was quoted by domestic Cuban news agency AIN as saying the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar contains people ``with a racist and colonialist mentality.''
``It is unacceptable that at these levels there are politicians who want to treat Cuba as a slave nation,'' he said Thursday in the eastern city of Santiago.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party paper Granma suggested that Spain, which has the largest share of foreign investments in Cuba, was damaging its own economic interests on the island.
Granma suggested that the Spanish government was harming Spanish interests in favor of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami.
Granma noted that Spain has tried to play a leading role in economic and cultural relations with Cuba but said that now, with U.S. backing, it was trying to ``again convert Cuba into a U.S. neocolony.''
The confrontation at the embassy followed Cuba's announcement Monday that a new Spanish ambassador was unwelcome because of Spain's criticism of Cuba's government and comes days before a Spanish resolution calling for political liberalization in Cuba is scheduled to go before the European Union.
The rift between the two former allies has been brewing since May, when the conservative Aznar took office in Madrid.
Even under former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, ``relations were never as strained as they are now under Aznar,'' said political scientist John Kirk, a Cuba specialist at Dalhousie University in Canada.
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald