EL PAÍS

Skepticism in Cuba over talks with the United States: ‘It’s as if the people are to blame for not reinventing themselves’

Sergio Murguía — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:11:03 +0000

When Lisandra Ferro, a 43-year-old Havana resident, woke up on Friday amid yet another blackout, her heart was racing. She had been feeling anxious since the night before, when she learned that President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez would be holding a press conference at 7:30 a.m., after several weeks of fuel shortages that have brought the island and everyone living on it to its knees. She wanted to hear something that would pull her out of the stupor she had been living in: caring for two small children, enduring power cuts of more than 15 hours a day, and having to change jobs twice in a single month.

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Discontent in Cuba takes shape with pot-banging protests and student assemblies

Sergio Murguía — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:18:44 +0000

Fuel shortages continue to take their toll on a Cuba on the brink, where with each passing day, more reasons for discontent grow. The residents of the capital, more powerless than determined because they see no end to their precarious situation, have once again taken to their pots and pans to protest the prolonged power outages. Last week, blackouts hit Havana neighborhoods particularly hard — in the rest of the country, the outages have been exceeding 24 hours for some time now — alternating between about four hours of electricity and some 15 hours without. “No one can work, study, or be happy like this,” says Leandro Fernández, a young student at the University of Havana who lives in the Cerro neighborhood. He speaks, pot in hand, faithful to a custom he adopted a week ago, along with other residents, at around 9:30 p.m., when it’s now common for them to have been without electricity for about 13 hours.

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Being retired in an exhausted Cuba: ‘You can’t tell people we’re going to live off what we produce. What on earth do we produce?’

Sergio Murguía — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000

“The good thing about this is how bad it’s getting.” It’s one of those popular phrases that Cubans have heard their grandparents say all their lives, in the face of difficult situations in daily life. Ana Julia T., who is 68, couldn’t help but utter it, sitting in front of the television at home, while the authorities announced some of the contingency measures related to electricity consumption, transportation, work, and education, to cope with the current fuel shortage the island is suffering, a result of the energy blockade imposed by the Donald Trump Administration.

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The sinking of Cuba: ‘We are a sacrificial altar’

Sergio Murguía, David Marcial Pérez , Carla Gloria Colomé — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000

A few blocks from Revolution Square, in a former shantytown in Havana, Dr. Omitsa Valdés holds her consultations. It’s a dusty, dilapidated place where she tells patients they must bring their own syringe and medication from home. But if a general checkup is needed, including urine and blood tests, Dr. Valdés is even more direct: “If you can get it done yourself, I’ll write the order. If not, you’re out of luck, my dear, because the polyclinic you’re assigned to doesn’t have the re-agents,” she tells a patient while recycling old papers used to write prescriptions.

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Cuba faces a sharp drop in tourism as fuel shortages force airlines to cut flights

Sergio Murguía — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:36:05 +0000

Ever since Donald Trump’s threats against Cuba intensified, the situation on the island grows bleaker day by day. Even the tourism sector — historically prioritized by Cuban authorities for its role in guaranteeing foreign currency inflows — has not been spared contingency measures the government is implementing to address the fuel shortage resulting from Trump’s energy embargo.

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Facing economic collapse, a cornered Cuba is forced into dialogue with the US

Sergio Murguía, David Marcial Pérez — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:14:12 +0000

The zero option was mooted by Fidel Castro in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Without the support of the Soviets, especially regarding oil shipments, Castroism came up with a survival strategy: strict rationing, suspension of public transportation and temporary closure of schools and universities. The strategy was narrowly avoided. But now, three decades later, the zero option has veered back into view as the country teeters on the edge of its worst crisis in recent history.

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Cuba’s growing fuel shortages: ‘This feels apocalyptic’

Sergio Murguía — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:03:55 +0000

Andy is a young taxi driver from Havana who, in recent weeks, has settled into a grueling but effective routine to survive Cuba’s current fuel shortage. He dedicates one day a week entirely to waiting in line for 12 to 15 hours—the first time it was 26—to buy 40 liters of gasoline at state-run gas stations, which now sell the product exclusively in dollars. Just 40 liters: not a liter more, not a liter less, ever since the authorities regulated the amount each user can purchase starting last weekend.

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Trump’s oil tariff push deepens Cuba’s agony: ‘I’m just doing my best to survive’

Sergio Murguía, Carla Gloria Colomé, David Marcial Pérez — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:41:14 +0000

Lines to buy fuel in Havana have been longer than usual in recent weeks. It’s not that Cubans have more money, that there’s greater supply, or that prices have gone down. The gasoline currently available at service stations is sold mostly in dollars and, despite being more expensive, it runs out quickly. Lines of cars pile up at gas stations.

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Havana pulses with jazz despite blackouts and Trump’s threats

Sergio Murguía — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:32:25 +0000

Cuba has long been under the effects of a perfect storm that shows no signs of abating. In addition to constant power outages, the high cost of living, persistent unsanitary conditions in the streets, and a tangled economic crisis that Cuban authorities seem incapable of resolving, there are now direct threats from Donald Trump’s administration, aimed at the Castro regime which has been in power for nearly 70 years. Amid this bleak landscape, a jazz festival that seeks to light up the city has sparked curiosity and enthusiasm.

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Cubans look to Venezuela fearfully after Trump’s incursion: ‘We could be next’

Sergio Murguía — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:40:52 +0000

When Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and taken out of Venezuela by U.S. military forces in the early hours of Saturday morning, a group of young Cubans were celebrating a birthday at a house in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood. They were sharing music, jokes and drinks when the hostess noticed an alert on her phone. News of the U.S. strike on Caracas, part of the operation to capture the Venezuelan leader, sparked a conversation that dominated the rest of the evening. From initial shock, the mood shifted to fear. “Cuba could be next,” some of the guests said as they watched videos of an event that—despite having been predicted so many times—had seemed improbable to many until then.

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How a Spanish teacher convicted of abusing a 12-year-old student reinvented himself in Havana

Sergio Murguía — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:59:07 +0000

Martiño Ramos Soto — known as Martín Soto to the Cubans who met him on the island — had been moving through Havana like a fish in water since he arrived in the Cuban capital last summer, on the run from Spanish justice while serving a 13-year-and-six-month prison sentence for sexually abusing a 12-year-old student in the Spanish region of Galicia. He lived in Havana quietly until his crimes became public, and it was announced on Monday that he had been arrested by the Revolutionary National Police (PNR).

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The lives that Hurricane Melissa upturned in Cuba

Sergio Murguía — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 04:00:00 +0000

The smell of death permeates Cauto el Paso. The stench emanating from the remains of horses, goats, cows, and pigs has overtaken this town in Granma province for the past two weeks. Located near the Cauto River, the most voluminous in Cuba, this waterway — far from living up to its name — overflowed its banks in the early hours of October 31, following the passage of the powerful Hurricane Melissa. The carcasses appear along the road at regular intervals, tangled in the thick mud left by the floods that submerged the area for several days. They are a stark reminder of the helplessness of the inhabitants of this eastern region of the island, so dependent on their animals, where the hurricane came to take almost everything and further disrupt their already precarious lives.

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