The decision of the European Union to pursue an appeasement course in respect of Fidel Castro has to be a bitter piece of news for those invested in the cause of freedom in Cuba. Not because 25 Eurocrats in Luxembourg could crush the spirit of democratic reform surging on the island; they can’t. Rather it’s because the EU foreign ministers’ acquiescence to Castro – and the announcement of their preference for “constructive dialogue” with his regime – signals that those Cubans working for democratic reform will find in Europe not shrewd and sympathetic allies, but naifs concerned with protecting their economic interests. And a prime culprit is, once again, Spain.

Among the components of the EU’s decision yesterday is a year-long shutout of the opposition from European embassies’ national-day celebrations. This is a continuation of the current default. These events once gave dissidents an important venue for interaction with international power brokers and provided vital exposure to world diplomacy in anticipation of the day when leaders of the opposition will replace Mr. Castro, occupying Havana’s legitimate halls of power.

Europe’s decision to push these figures to the margin in order to placate Mr. Castro, who grumbled mightily when the policy was initiated in June 2003, is all the more embarrassing in light of the dissidents’ extraordinary accomplishments on May 20, during the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba. As our Meghan Clyne reported in the week preceding the Assembly – representing hundreds of civic groups in Cuba – the island’s pro-democracy activists risked their lives to plan for a peaceful transition to the post-Castro era. It was Cuba’s first large-scale pro-democracy gathering in the 46 years of Castro’s rule.

The flag of The New York Sun has flown for this cause for more than a century. The editor who bought the paper after the American Civil War, Charles A. Dana, had a near obsession with the struggle for freedom in Cuba. He maintained a long friendship with Jose Marti, and, for a period, the Cuba Libre movement was actually headquartered outside the door of the editor’s office on lower Broadway. Frank O’Brien, in his history of the Sun, wrote of how Dana had an “affection … for everything Cuban except Spanish dominion.” He quotes E.P. Mitchell, who became the Sun’s editor in 1903, as saying that Dana was “the warm friend of Jose Marti” and corresponded personally with the “leading revolutionists actually fighting in the island.” The Sun, wrote Mitchell, was “then the foremost if not the only American organ of Cuban independence.”

So we don’t mind being alone on this story, but the fact is that today the struggle for liberty in Cuba is entering a new and pivotal phase, and it needs all the allies it can get. And while the Assembly’s being allowed to take place may have been a reflection of the growing power of the anti-Castro movement, the event was not without interruption. In addition to the Cubans Mr. Castro detained in advance of the gathering, several European journalists and parliamentarians who visited for the Assembly were turned back even though they possessed proper documentation. Some were arrested.

Despite the indignant condemnations summarily issued from the detained observers’ countries of origin, the European powers still, evidently, cling to the belief that Mr. Castro requires only a sufficient amount of patience, and conversation, to get him to mend his ways. Cubans know better. Parts of Europe – only recently under the yoke of communism, or menaced by it – comprehend as well. EU policy on Cuba, however, is largely the purview of Spain, owing to its historical ties. Yet Spain, following the election of its Socialist premier, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has chosen to be more accommodating of Havana’s dictator; Spain’s ambassador to Cuba, Carlos Alonso Zaldivar, is a former militant member of Spain’s communist party. So in a bizarre turn of history, the Cubans are fighting to throw off the yoke of Spain. Dana would have understood that Spain’s motives are no better today than they were more than a century ago.