Today's must read is an interview by Jeremy Gerard and Sharon Smyth from Bloomberg News of Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, one of the freed dissidents exiled in Spain last week. This short interview does an excellent job of describing the horrors of being in a Castro gulag and the evil monstrosity that is the Cuban dictatorship.

Cuban Prisoner Gonzalez Recalls Rage, Rats, Starving: Interview

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- After seven years and four months in some of Cuba’s most infamous prisons, journalist and poet Normando Hernandez Gonzalez is finally free.

Last week, the ailing writer was hastily released and flown to Madrid along with 10 other prisoners and their families. Nine more are expected to arrive today in Madrid, thanks to the Catholic Church, which negotiated their release to Spain.

He spoke to us at the dingy Welcome Hostal in the industrial outlands of Madrid, far from the Plaza Mayor. Right now, the International Red Cross seems overwhelmed with the task of housing the Cubans, many of whom are very ill from years of maltreatment.

Gonzalez had no celebratory Spanish meal of eels upon his arrival; even baby food leaves him with painful cramping. “My digestive system,” he said, is “shot to pieces.” So far, he’s only had one perfunctory medical examination.

His gratitude at being reunited with his wife, Yarai Reyes, and their daughter, Daniela, is untainted by his anger over the years lost to himself and his family for the “crime” of speaking truth to power.

“Our release is purely for political means,” Gonzalez said. He was dressed in a blue and white checked short-sleeve shirt and jeans, his nose and Adam’s apple visibly deformed by a poorly treated tumor.

“The real catalyst of our release was the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died on February 23 after a hunger strike that lasted 83 days,” he continued. “His death echoed around the world, it was terrible press for the regime.”

Continue reading this interview HERE.