Spain’s newly appointed Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo has visited Cuba at least 11 times and declared that its government cannot stay in power by force forever, but counseled engagement and patience rather than confrontation.

García-Margallo, appointed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Wednesday, is expected to focus on critical issues such as the European Union’s financial chaos and relations with the United States and Moslem nations across the Mediterranean.

But his past experiences with Cuba may serve him well in handling the relations between Rajoy’s right-of-center government and the island. Rajoy’s People’s Party defeated the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in elections last month.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, who was foreign minister under former PSOE Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was fired in late 2010 amid complaints that he was too friendly with Cuba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

García-Margallo, 67, who has a law degree from Harvard, is known in the European Parliament as a level-headed conciliator — a trait he showed in an interview in 2000 with the Madrid-based magazine Libertad Digital — Digital Freedom.

While his interviewer branded Cuban rulers as dictators and murderers, he chose his words carefully in describing his just-completed 11th visit to Cuba — apparently many of them as a member of a European Parliament economic panel that deals with Cuba issues.

García-Margallo said he had met with top government officials as well as leading dissidents even though “it bothers the Cuban government when we meet with dissidents. It bothers them a lot.”

Asked how he could meet with such “evil” government officials, he replied, “Politics is the art of the possible. You tell me: What else can we do?”

“I believe that it’s good that we visit the island and talk to everyone that we can. The Cuban government has to know that we are watching whatever happens to the dissidents,” he noted.

García-Margallo added that it was not possible “to maintain a regime in power by force permanently,” but added that “trying to make them surrender through hunger does not seem possible, or good. To seek a bloodbath there cannot be the solution.”

“I can affirm, with some knowledge, that until the plans for a succession are carried out, there’s not the least possibility of a political change,” he added.

In 2000, Cuban leader Fidel Castro was grudgingly beginning to adopt some reforms in order to overcome the economic collapsed triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the end of Moscow’s huge subsidies.

García-Margallo said that Spanish investments in Cuba, which were expanding rapidly at the time, were not a bad thing.

“One of the things that can happen, if there’s a change in the regime, would be an absolute Americanization, that Cuba would become another Puerto Rico,” he declared. “I would consider it deplorable if Cuba’s Spanish identity were to be lost.”

Asked if he had any final words for the Cuban people, García-Margallo replied, “Wait.” The interviewer, Victor Llano, shot back, “I was afraid of that.”