The recognition and homage to those who gave the best years of their lives to the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) was present today in Ciego de Avila, on a founding day, which is remembered for the unity and the proclamation of the socialist character of the Revolution.

Julio Gómez Casanova, first secretary of the PCC in the province, visited on Wednesday morning founders of the political organisation, which was founded during the battles of Playa Girón, as well as cadres with an outstanding career within its ranks.

Gómez Casanova visited the homes of the founders Audel Alejandro González García and David Raúl Hidalgo Hidalgo, in which they recalled anecdotes of those early years, when the revolutionary process was being forged, the past challenges and the current ones in the construction of socialism.

The thanks also went to Carlos Luis Garrido Pérez, who held important positions in the party structure of the province, as well as to Osvel Pérez Balmaseda, general director of the Empresa Agroindustrial Municipal Ciego de Ávila and an outstanding member of the PCC in Avila for almost two decades.

Later, the theatre of the PCC Provincial Committee headquarters hosted the ceremony to award men and women working in the political organisation for between five and 45 years, for their dedication, responsibility and exemplary attitude.

Among those honoured were Aida Rosa Camejo Mariano, proofreader for four decades for the newspaper Invasor, and Carlos García Cervantes, driver for the PCC Provincial Committee, who has been working in that job for 45 years.

On the definition of 16 April 1961 as the founding date, Fidel Castro Ruz, historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, said that, at «Giron, our Party was born in fact in the close unity of all revolutionaries and the working people, cemented by the heroism of our working class, who fought and shed their generous blood in defence of the homeland and socialism».