MADRID: Nine more Cuban dissidents recently freed by Havana will arrive in Spain next week, joining 11 other former prisoners already in the country, the Spanish foreign minister said Saturday.

"Next Tuesday, nine other political prisoners will arrive with 50 members of their family," Miguel Angel Moratinos told Radio Nacional de Espana.

They were at the prison hospital in Havana and "ready to travel," Cuban dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe told AFP, after speaking to some of them on the phone.

Gisela Sanchez, wife of one of the former prisoners Antonio Diaz, 47, told AFP that her husband had confirmed on the phone Friday that they were ready to leave, but no date had been set for their journey to Spain.

They nine ex-prisoners will join 11 other dissidents who arrived in Spain last week, as Cuba undertakes its biggest release of political prisoners in over a decade.

Spain, the former colonial power in Cuba and the largest foreign investor in the country, helped broker the deal reached on July 7 between the Cuban government and the Church to gradually free 52 detainees.

The deal came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.

Havana wants to avoid a repeat of the death in detention of political prisoner Orlando Zapata on February 23 as it seeks closer international ties to improve its economic situation.

Madrid has said it is willing to receive all the freed detainees, who were sentenced in 2003 to prison terms of between six and 28 years.

BDST: 0918 HRS, 18 July 2010