From Miami, this is how José Daniel Ferrer addressed Luis Robles, “the young man with the placard,” at a press conference held in Madrid.
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 15 October 2025 — “I had already served my sentence, but I was still a hostage,” Luis Robles told 14ymedio a few hours after arriving in Madrid on Monday, after serving five years in prison in Cuba for marching in Havana with a placard demanding freedom. In the Spanish capital, he was accompanied by his mother and six-year-old son, while his brother Lester remains imprisoned on the island.
“The goal of my protest was to break the silence,” Robles said, because “I didn’t want to be complicit in the abuses being committed, in the hunger… Someone had to do it.” The young man saw that everyone around him thought like him, but fear prevented them from defending their opinions. He didn’t consider himself a politician or a leader, just a citizen tired of remaining silent in the face of injustice. “That day I decided to break the fear,” he said with a firm voice and gaze, without losing the humility and simplicity that characterize him.
Robles and his mother, Yindra Elizastigui, spoke about the call they received from the State Security officer in charge of harassing them. “Where is Luis?” the officer asked over the phone in a clearly annoyed tone, although news of his arrival in Spain was already circulating in independent media and on social media. His mother answered without a tremble in her voice: “You know, he’s already out of Cuba.”
He did not consider himself a politician or a leader, just a citizen tired of keeping silent in the face of injustice.
The officer criticized them for not having informed him directly about Robles’s efforts to leave the country. Despite knowing of his intention to leave the island, they pressured him to handle any arrangements through them, in order to maintain absolute control over his actions. “They constantly threatened my mother with me, and me with her. They made us believe that any word or action could land me back in prison, despite having fully served an unjust sentence,” Robles told this newspaper.
The phone call suggested that Officer “Michel”— as he calls himself —had been reprimanded by his superiors for not being able to keep track of every movement of Robles and his family. Although the state’s repressive machinery monitors and controls its targets down to the smallest movement, it doesn’t always operate as smoothly as they would have us believe.
The officer admitted in the call that “everything belongs to them,” referring to Villa Marista and other places where Robles had to go to complete his exit procedures, but his discomfort was not having been able to properly carry out his task of following his steps and finding out everything before his superiors.
Regarding his time in Combinado del Este prison, Robles says he stood up for his position as a political prisoner. He never admitted to having committed a crime, but rather to exercising and defending a human right. In prison, he faced threats, punishment, and repression, but he also felt the respect of other prisoners who admired his firm stance.
Robles says he defended his position as a political prisoner. He never admitted to having committed a crime, but rather to exercising and defending a human right.
Robles, his mother, and his son arrived dressed in white, bearing with them the justice of their cause and their commitment to the other political prisoners still in Cuba. His mother, a Guantanamo native who doesn’t hesitate to confront injustice, can’t stop thinking about her son Léster, who remains imprisoned in Cuba awaiting trial. “In a regime like Cuba’s, any citizen runs the risk of having a crime fabricated against them,” she tells us, but she won’t rest until Léster and the rest of the victims of the dictatorship are also free.
His mother recounted her ordeal at a press conference this Wednesday. “My life changed completely since my son Landy started the campaign for Luis Robles’s release. I realized I was just another prisoner who had to follow orders.” They began harassing her at work; they even went to a niece’s school to ask about Luis. “I was forced to leave my job at Housing in Guantánamo; I had to take a leave of absence to go to Havana to see my son’s situation, but all these setbacks we went through because Luis made me grow up.”
“Fear prevails in Cuba, but there are many people who are in touch with reality and have discovered that they are outraged and are not afraid,” he added. He also highlighted the role of families and the harm that silence causes to those in prison. “Many prisoners feel abandoned by Cubans themselves; they raised their voices for everyone. What better way than for those Cubans to support them. We are more than the authorities, the police, or State Security.”
José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, also participated online from Miami.
The press conference was organized and moderated by Javier Larrondo, president of the Prisoners Defenders organization. Also participating online from Miami was José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), who praised the valor of Luis Robles: “With so many young people like you, tyranny doesn’t last a week.” Ferrer was exiled the same day Robles arrived in Madrid. Also in attendance were Javier Nart, a Member of the European Parliament, and Spanish lawyer Blas Jesús Imbroda.
A representative of the Cuban exile community gratefully welcomed Robles and his family. Several activists had been discreetly organizing his arrival for months to prevent the regime from impeding his departure. “I will continue fighting for those who remain there, and for Cuba to be free,” stated the man who became known as the “young man with the placard,” who is determined to continue raising his voice from Spain.
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