The party has confirmed that it was invited to send a representative on the trip but has not given a reason for its decision not to do so.
Luis Montenegro of the centre-right Social Democratic Party, Idália Serrão of the Socialist Party, Hélder Amaral of the right-wing People’s Party, António Filipe of the Communist Party, and José Luis Ferreira of the Greens are the MPs who travelled with the head of state as they left for Cuba on Tuesday.
The People-Animals-Nature, which has just one MP, was also not represented on the trip.
During the trip the president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, met his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro, and was also likely to meet Cuba’s historic leader, Fidel Castro.
De Sousa set off for Havana on Tuesday on a commercial flight via Paris, arriving in the Cuban capital at 8.25pm local time (1.25am on Wednesday, Lisbon time). His official programme started on Wednesday.
The president was invited by Raúl Castro to visit Cuba. From there he is to travel on to the Ibero-American summit on Friday and Saturday in Cartagena das Indias, Colombia.
According to the official programme, as well as the institutional aspect, the visit to Cuba was also due to have a cultural element and also focussed on economic relations.
Cuba is gradually opening up its economy and recently resumed diplomatic ties with the US after an economic and financial embargo by that country that lasted more than half a century.