Dozens of people have gathered in the U.S. city of Miami to commemorate Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas on the tenth anniversary of his death by naming one of the busiest streets in the city after him.

The authorities of Miami-Dade County, in the state of Florida, have indicated that “preserving the legacy of Payá, a great defender of Human Rights, is very important”.

Rebaca Sosa, a member of the local government, has expressed that “it is an honor that this street is named in the great memory of the great Payá, a man who fought for freedom, for democracy, who was persecuted, who was murdered and this remains in the district for history, so that future generations will know what they did”.

Thus, he stressed that losing the opponent “meant a very great pain” and showed that he did not have “the opportunity to leave Cuba”. His widow, Ofelia Acevedo, said in statements to Radio Television Martí that the pain “is still as strong as the day he died”.

“The family continues to miss Oswaldo very much and that will always be the case,” she said. His daughter, for her part, stressed that her father “dedicated his life to transforming Cuba” and emphasized that “although he has not yet changed, the Cuban people have”.

“My father dedicated his life so that Cubans would take that step, which in the first place is a step of personal liberation, but it is also a step out of love for our fellow man and so that we would take the step of claiming rights for ourselves, for our children, for our country,” said the also oppositionist.

This Friday, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, took the opportunity to remember his death and stressed that he was a “tireless fighter for democracy and freedom in Cuba”.

“Payá dedicated his life to the belief that one day Cubans would be free. Let’s make this example an inspiration and never be forgotten,” he said in a message posted on his Twitter account.

A leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and 2002 Sakharov Prize winner, Payá was one of Cuba’s best-known dissidents. He launched the Varela Project, which succeeded in collecting thousands of signatures inside Cuba in early 2000 in support of holding a referendum calling for constitutional change, the introduction of freedom of association and expression, free elections, free enterprise and amnesty for political prisoners.

The Cuban opposition leader died in a traffic accident in 2012, an accident that his family still blames on the government. The car in which he was traveling together with the PP member Angel Carromero -who was driving the vehicle-, a Swedish politician and the Cuban opponent Harold Cepero -who also died- suffered an accident that, according to the family, was caused by another vehicle that rammed him and pushed him off the road. Thus, the relatives support the hypothesis that the accident was caused by the Cuban secret services.