The former leader of Canarian independence Antonio Cubillo has died this Monday morning of natural causes, according to La Provincia.
Cubillo was born in La Laguna, in Tenerife, in 1930. He founded the Canarian Autonomist Movement and was co-founder of Canarias Libre. Most of the members of this organization were arrested, but Cubillo managed to escape. Thus, he was expatriated in Paris and Algeria.
In 1964, this lawyer founded the independentist organization Movement for the Self-determination and Independence of the Canarian Archipelago, MPAIAC. Years later, in 1975, the MPAIAC began radio broadcasts of La Voz de Canarias Libre from Radio Argel, which ended up closing in 1978.
In 1978, he suffered a frustrated attack in Algeria and in 1990 he managed to get the Spanish Justice to consider this act as state terrorism. Cubillo returned to the Canary Islands in 1986 and later founded the political party National Congress of the Canary Islands (CNC), which had a presence in Lanzarote.
The Arrecife councilor Emilia Perdomo started in politics with Cubillo. "He ran for Parliament for the island of Lanzarote and I ran for the Arrecife City Council and I became a councilor. It would be the year 1987", she recalls. "They were my beginnings in politics and there was a strong movement throughout the Canary Islands, especially in Lanzarote," she says.
"A prepared man, with clear ideas"
Perdomo highlights that Cubillo was "a prepared man, with clear ideas." "He arrived here and all the nationalist movements put themselves at his service. But he brought a different vision after living for years in Algiers and he didn't pay too much attention and, for that reason, people were withdrawing and he ran for the island of Lanzarote," she says.
Precisely, one of the anecdotes that Emilia Perdomo remembers the most is Cubillo's return from Algiers. "All the ships in all the Canarian ports honked at the same time as a tribute," says the councilor, who assures that "every conference he gave was filled with people."
Perdomo assures that Cubillo "continued his whole life with his personal struggle," promoting Canarian nationalism.
