The sister of the martial arts champion kidnapped by Cuban State Security denies the alleged complaints from neighbors
14ymedio, Madrid, April 28, 2026 — “They call you crazy for shouting the truth to the world, for not being afraid.” Yuny, sister of mixed martial arts champion Javier Ernesto Martín Gutiérrez, known as ‘Spiderman’, has spoken out against the official justification for the violent arrest of her brother on April 24, after eight days of solitary protest from his home in Marianao (Havana).
The young woman completely rejects the version of events disseminated by the website Razones de Cuba to discredit him, namely, that the athlete is being held at Villa Marista, the State Security’s paralegal operations center, “for an evaluation to determine if he suffers from any disorder and to be able to help him.” The same publication revealed the harassment Spiderman‘s family received during the days of protest, but described it as a gesture of support: “Municipal officials approached the mother before the media spectacle, concerned about her son’s abnormal behavior.”
Furthermore, the wrestler’s neighbors were portrayed as victims “overwhelmed” by the athlete’s protests. “Meanwhile, in Marianao, neighbors sleep peacefully without shouting. In Villa Marista, a man receives a clinical evaluation, not torture,” concluded Razones de Cuba.
“All of Javier’s neighbors know him and know what he’s like, and I’d even venture to say that the neighbors are super proud of him.”
“That talk about the neighbors is a lie,” asserts Yuny Martín. His brother, for starters, she explains, lives in a place with few neighbors, on 31st Avenue across from the El Lido bus terminal, “across from an old Rápido [a cafeteria], one of the many that used to be in Cuba, and downstairs there’s just a bakery.” On the contrary, she affirms, “all of Javier’s neighbors know him and what he’s like, and I’d even venture to say that the neighbors are incredibly proud of him.”
Martín Gutiérrez, she continues, “has always been a very loved and respected young man, because he won everyone’s affection from a young age, so I seriously doubt everything that State Security wrote.” The woman is aware of how the system works. “They’re going to try to minimize Javier’s image as much as possible.”
The young man, she says, “what affected him most in this whole situation is precisely seeing that he has so many friends and loved ones and that everyone has his back.” The “disorder” argument, she argues, is easier to make “with someone who isn’t normally like that, shouting, having those kinds of outbursts, because it wasn’t common for him to do those things.”
“What affected him most in this whole situation is precisely seeing that he has so many friends and so many loved ones and that everyone has his back.”
Nobody imagined, she concedes, that Javier would be capable of protesting in that way, but everyone has to understand that “everyone gets tired”: “It was as I explained in a video: everything in life has a limit and what the Cuban is going through has never been seen.”
Before his arrest, the activist spent days shouting “Freedom!” from the solitude of his balcony, with no company but his cell phone and a mostly digital audience. “The communist system is dead! Did you see State Security? It’s you! Look at yourselves! Nobody’s coming!” he shouted toward the street, while challenging the police: “Come and get me! Shoot me with whatever you want!”
What the family did expect, starting with Javier himself, were the consequences of such a demonstration: “We knew from the moment Javier went viral on social media what was going to happen, especially because of who he is, because he’s an MMA [mixed martial arts] fighter, because he’s a national champion.” Yuny says, “My only role as his sister, because it’s my responsibility, because it’s my pain, was to help him. And to tell him a thousand times that I was incredibly proud of him for what he was doing.” However, she admits that in the last few days she asked him to stop the protest: “You have to stop, because in the end you see that you’re alone, nobody joins you, what we didn’t want was for it to get to this point.”
Yuny now asks that people continue to talk about her brother: “We can’t give up, because Javier is alive thanks to social media, and I’m not going to get tired of helping him. I’m going to go as far as I have to.”
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