The day included testimonies from Cuba, an augmented reality installation about 11J, and a demand for the release of political prisoners.
14ymedio, Madrid, July 9, 2026 / Five years after the protests of 11 July 2021 [‘11J‘], some of its protagonists met again, far from the streets where it all began. This time it was in Madrid, in a venue in the Malasaña neighborhood, but with the same urgency as before: to remember the largest social uprising in Cuba since 1959 and to denounce the fact that the repression unleashed after that event has not ended. Under the slogan “Today could be another 11J,” Cuban civil society in exile is organizing three days of activities in the Spanish capital to discuss memory, resistance, political prisoners, and the democratic future.
The first event was the discussion “Five Years Later: Memory, Resistance, and Freedom,” held this Thursday at the Casa del Cura Community Social Center. The gathering brought together activists, former political prisoners, human rights defenders, and direct participants in the demonstrations that shook the island five years ago, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets chanting “libertad” and “Patria y Vida” [“Freedom” and “Homeland and Life”].
The discussion was moderated by Dayana Prieto, a Cuban audiovisual producer and activist based in Madrid. Guests included Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders; art curator and artivist Solveig Font Martínez; playwright Yunior García Aguilera; filmmaker and activist Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez Yong; and Elías Rizo León, known as “the boy with the flag” for being the subject of one of the most symbolic images of those days.
The panel’s composition brought together several layers of the events of July 11th: the citizen protests, the immediate repression, imprisonment, exile, and the persistence of a memory that the Cuban regime attempts to erase or reduce to a mere legal case. Solveig Font and Yunior García were arrested during the demonstration in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television in Havana, one of the locations where popular demands merged with calls for freedom of expression and rejection of official propaganda. Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez Yong was also arrested that day, while Elías Rizo had to remain in hiding with his family until he was able to leave the country.
Testimonies also arrived from Cuba reminding everyone that the wound of July 11th remains open. Former political prisoner Alexander Díaz Rodríguez sent a message emphasizing the need to remember those imprisoned for taking to the streets in July 2021 and to maintain international pressure demanding their release. His remarks drew a connection between the event in Madrid and the reality of those on the island who still face surveillance, harassment, and the legal consequences of that protest.
The message from Mailín Rodríguez Sánchez, wife of political prisoner Yosvani Rosell García, convicted for his participation in the July 11th protests, was also heard. Her testimony put a name and a familiar face to the cost of the repression. In her voice, the anniversary ceased to be a political date and became an intimate denunciation of the prolonged punishment inflicted upon the protesters and their families.
One of the most unique moments of the event was the presentation of Caribbean Jacuzzi, an augmented reality installation by artist Yimit Ramírez. Through smart glasses, viewers could interact with a recreation of the overturned police car from the July 11 protests and with the iconic image of the young man who, standing atop the car, waved the Cuban flag amidst the crowd. The piece brought one of the most powerful visual symbols of those days into the exhibition space, not as a mere archival document, but as an immersive experience.
The scene took on a particularly poignant tone when the man in the photograph, Elías Rizo, put on the glasses and saw himself in the installation. The gesture encapsulated the distance between the historical moment and his memory: the young man who five years earlier had become a symbol of defiance now returned to that image from exile, transformed simultaneously into a witness, a participant, and a survivor of a protest that marked a generation.
At the end of the event, activist Yanelis Núñez held a live broadcast in which several participants expressed their concern for the situation of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and demanded his release. The Cuban artist and dissident remains in the custody of State Security, despite having completed his unjust sentence on July 9. The live broadcast served as a political epilogue to the day’s events.
The activities will continue this Friday, July 10, at 5:00 p.m., at the Casa de la Libertad in Cuba, with the colloquium ” Challenges for the Cuba to Come .” The meeting, moderated by Dr. Antonio Guedes, will shift the focus from the memory of July 11 to the challenges of a potential democratic transition, in a debate about the country that could emerge after the regime and about the role of the exile community in that reconstruction.
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