File photo: Cuban President Fidel Castro (L), talks with the Colombian Nobel Laureate of Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, during a dinner at the closing of the Cuban Cigars Festival in Havana, Cuba
Fidel Castro is "dismayed" over the recent death of literary legend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a longtime friend of the Cuban revolutionary icon, a senior official said on Friday.
"Of course, he is dismayed about the death of Garcia Marquez, who was his dear friend," Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel told reporters. It was the first official reaction from the 87-year-old Castro following the death of the Nobel-winning Colombian author in Mexico City last week.
The pair met after Castro grabbed power in the 1959 revolution. Garcia Marquez had come to Cuba as a journalist to cover Castro's band of guerrillas.
They quickly became friends, bringing together two of Latin America's most prominent figures of the 20th century. Garcia Marquez even worked for Cuba's Prensa Latina news agency in Bogota and New York.
"Fidel is a man of great human sensitivity," Diaz-Canel told reporters at the Colombian embassy in Havana, where he had gone to sign a book of condolences. "He feels the loss of a friend -- like anyone who has human sensibilities would."
Diaz-Canel also spoke briefly about Castro's health, saying it was "very good" and adding: "He is working intensely on various things that have occupied his time recently."