Odds and ends

• Two Cuban-Americans in today’s presidential inauguration ceremony: poet Richard Blanco, profiled here in TIME, and Rev. Luis Leon, who will give the benediction.

• This article in El Confidencial Digital reports that the Spanish government has decided to adopt a “more serene posture” regarding Cuba, including fewer activities in Havana involving dissidents and no activity regarding Cuba in the European Parliament.  This has led many to say that Madrid has entered a pact of silence that has kept Angel Carromero, the Partido Popular activist who drive the car in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed, from telling what really happened in that crash last July.  See, for example, this call from a Cuban organization in Spain that says that Carromero, having been “a hostage of the Castros,” cannot now become “hostage of his party and the Spanish government.”  When we last heard from Carromero’s associates, they were saying that he was considering speaking out, and he was in the process of reconstructing his memory of the event.  They have been quiet for some time now.

• The Cuban television program Al Derecho has questions and answers about the new immigration law.

• Havana Times: “Where Cubans Can Go Without a Visa.”

• In Diario de Cuba, Oscar Elias Biscet’explains his “Proyecto Emilia” and Miguel Fernandez-Diaz offers a critique.

• Cuba’s lineup for the 2013 World Baseball Classic was announced last week.

• Granma on “the most Cuban of masses.”