Cuba's new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, was born in 1960. The revolution had triumphed fifteen months earlier and changes were beginning to be implemented at full speed.

Fifty-eight years have passed and no Castro presides over the country, although control remains in the hands of Raúl Castro, who continues to head the Armed Forces and the Communist Party, at least until 2021. His son, Alejandro Castro, heads the intelligence services and knows the secrets of all the elite and in 2014 led negotiations with the US.

Díaz-Canel is not a military man and the military is suspicious of him. He comes from the political apparatus, but does not dominate the Party. He is appreciated by Raúl Castro, but does not belong to the family clan. Of humble origin, he studied engineering and at the end of the 80's he fulfilled his military obligations in Nicaragua. There he was political commissar of the Armed Forces and lived through the end of Sandinismo.

When he returned to Cuba, he started a political degree program in second level positions. His great virtue? Not to make mistakes or enemies. Díaz-Canel was never a threat and he performed perfectly in the positions he held: first as a member of the Young Communist League, then as the highest political authority in the provinces (Villa Clara, Holguín...). In this period he promoted several cultural initiatives (some unexpected, such as El Mejunje, the entity that organized the first LGBTI festival in Cuba) and initiated an intense campaign against corruption. One thing for another, the old guard would think.

Step by step and already in Havana, the new president progressed steadily, although his case is far from the meteoric rise of other youth leaders elevated by Fidel Castro and burned in a short time by their ambition (the best known, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, dismissed in 1999).

Díaz-Canel's first great moment came in 2003 when Raúl Castro elected him member of the Political Bureau (the highest body of the PCC). In 2009, a deep governmental crisis occurred that took away the vice president and economic mastermind, Carlos Lage, as well as Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque.

The purge left the revolution without a generational change. Díaz-Canel, however, emerged reinforced as the new minister of Education, an important department , but without effective power. He focused on university reform and a plan to improve teaching facilities throughout the country. Meanwhile, Raul Castro included him in his closest circle of power, but protected him from the heavyweights (Minister of the Interior Ramiro Valdes, Minister of the Armed Forces Leopoldo Cintra...), historical commanders who are the guardians of the current process. He must have seen something in him.

2013 was the year of his consecration when he was appointed vice president of Cuba. Since then, he became increasingly visible and his name began to sound among the candidates for the announced and complex Castro's replacement.

Once elected, we can ask ourselves: are we at the beginning of a transition or just the epilogue of fidelismo? This question also arose with the appointment of Adolfo Suarez as Spanish president in 1976. Some personal parallels can be established between the two: origin far from the centers of power, family of class average , participation in youth organizations (one in the Catholic Action Youth, the other in the Union of Young Communists), loyalty to the single party, continuous promotion in the bureaucratic Structures ... Both developed their careers in secondary and provincial positions, both officialists and good connoisseurs of the territorial reality and the bureaucratic machinery. Díaz-Canel does not have the charisma of Suárez, but he is a good orator and, in spite of the age difference with which they reached the presidency of the government (43 years old the Spaniard, 58 the Cuban), they share an aura of youth.

With great difficulty, Suárez led a small group of politicians (Falangists, liberals, social democrats) of his generation convinced of the need for democracy. Three years later they had dismantled Franco's regime with the partnership of the Communist Party (the opposition par excellence) and a rejuvenated PSOE.

Achieving this in Cuba seems like a dream. First, because of the absence of a figure like King Juan Carlos, determined to modernize Spain in the shortest possible time. Secondly, because Raul Castro has not wanted to make any political opening, not even taking advantage of Obama's disposition. And thirdly, because the military structure remains vigilant, ready to guarantee revolutionary socialism whatever the cost.

However, what would happen if the new president tries to really exercise power? Would he be dismissed or would he manage to establish his own diary? What would happen if a group of officers were to choose him? Would he legalize the democratic civil service examination as Suarez did with the Communist Party? Or if a Gutierrez Mellado were to emerge willing to reform the Army? Adolfo Suarez designed his Government freely, something that Canel will only be able to do halfway and without touching the most sensitive ministries: Interior, Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs.

The new president faces too many unknowns, but no less than those that Suarez had to manage since 1976, while he was drafting the Law for Political Reform with Torcuato Fernandez-Miranda. The inevitability of democracy (and of the new positions it would offer) encouraged many of those who already enjoyed power to continue in it by paying the -always assumable- toll of ideological change. The Spanish advantage was that Franco was already dead.

The current challenges are enormous: Economics in bankruptcy, currency duality and budget cuts (especially in Education and healthcare). Foreign investment has stopped, growth is insufficient and the core changes -political ones- are still on the conference room waiting list. In a Cuba where everything happens in slow motion, will Díaz-Canel be able to speed up the image? Spain can collaborate now that the unsuccessful common position of the European Union promoted by Aznar in 1996 does not exist. For example, by confirming Felipe VI's official trip scheduled for this year. A meeting of the new heads of state would undoubtedly reinforce the Spanish role in this new political stage.

Santiago Carrillo described Suarez as "an intelligent and skillful anti-communist". Díaz-Canel's skill is evident, he only needs to demonstrate his intelligence and lead Cuba towards democracy.