No, he was welcomed like a rock star, swept up in a roar of ``Cuba Si!'' If Castro were a man who believed in judicial symmetry, he might have thought twice before stepping boot in Spain. After all, a fellow dictator, the now retired Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is a wanted man in that country.

There's a price on his head -- a Spanish judge set in motion Pinochet's arrest and is demanding his extradition for crimes against humanity.

At 82, Chile's figure of darkness was nabbed in a most emasculating fashion, as he recovered from surgery at a London clinic. The ghosts of his vicious past had returned to haunt him, their survivors chanting for justice outside.

Ah, but the ghosts of Castro's violence could not be heard. They were upstaged by the continuous fanfare that accompanies him.

In neighboring Portugal for a presidential summit, Castro encountered no rebukes during chats with Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar or King Juan Carlos I. Instead, there were warm advances.

In fact, Spain did not flinch at the strange juxtaposition of Castro and Pinochet, the parallels of suffering, the starkness of the extremes. It is a story told bullet for bullet, cell for cell, exile for exile.

It is no use to engage in a cruel contest, compare wounds, see which is greater, rationalize the nuances of historical circumstance or military intent. Comparisons only serve ideologies.

But somehow, in the eyes of a sympathetic international community, Castro is not judged with the big dictators.
What must he do?

On some level, Cuba's leader must find it odd that no matter how hard he tries, he never manages to rank among the great monsters. By now, it's obvious he could get away with just about anything.

What else could he possibly do to merit even a fraction of the scrutiny lavished on Pinochet this week?

Put his enemies before firing squads?

He did that. Hundreds and hundreds of times. In just three weeks during the start of his rule, Castro ordered 250 enemies executed. Eager to show off his harsh revolutionary justice, Castro invited the world press to witness the show trials and executions.

What else could he do, attack boats of fleeing refugees, send even the children to their deaths?

He did that -- more than once.

What else? Shoot down civilian planes on a humanitarian mission in international airspace?

He did that, too. As a result, there are four men at the bottom of the sea.

OK, what else? Jail his foes on ludicrous, trumped up charges?

Been there.

Repress basic civil liberties?

Done that.

Create an apartheid system that treats Cubans as second-class citizens, create a slave class for the benefit of foreign investors?

Got the T-shirt.
40 years of trying

The guy just can't seem to make the big league. Pinochet did it in less than 17 years in power. Castro's been there for nearly 40 and he's still taken as that funky old comandante  in fatigues. Pinochet's horrors can still provoke street protests -- even a decade after he relinquished his presidency in a plebiscite. Fiercely in power, a repressive machine still churning, Castro can't kick up the same outrage.

Long ago, Castro predicted history would absolve him. He was wrong. This week, in Spanish eyes, he's already been absolved.

He complained Pinochet was stealing the headlines from the summit. He's right, but he ought to keep it to himself, for Spain might notice this fluke of history: two brutal dictators coinciding -- one is retired by choice, the other is still working overtime.