Buena Fe Cancels Its Concert in Barcelona After a Protest by Cuban Activists in Madrid

Yoel Martínez and Israel Rojas, the members of the Buena Fe duo. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 14 May 14, 2023 — The concert of the duo Buena Fe, scheduled for this Sunday in Barcelona, was canceled as confirmed on the official website of the group, which has ties to the Cuban regime. In their last presentation, on May 11 in the Galileo Galilei room in Madrid, several attacks occurred against exiles from the Island by alleged government agents from Havana.

Buena Fe planned to perform at the Sidecar Room, Barcelona, as part of its tour of several cities in Spain. So far, the duo has not explained why they suspended the concert, but on their promotion page it appears as “cancelled.”

Their tour also includes a presentation at Ávalon Café de Zamora on May 18, and at Búho Club de San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the 20th. They have two concerts scheduled in the Galileo Galilei hall in Madrid, one on the 19th and the other on the 21st of this month.

In their presentation in Madrid, exiled doctors and activists Lucio Enríquez Nodarse and Emilio Arteaga Pérez reported that they were assaulted by alleged agents of the Cuban political police, who were there as security guards.

On his Facebook account, Nodarse transmitted the moment in which, at the end of one of the songs, the cry “Homeland and life!” is heard and “Freedom for political prisoners!” Immediately there is a struggle and the transmission is cut off.

Arteaga Pérez later explained in a Facebook broadcast that they entered the concert considering that “it was an opportunity for us to exercise our right to freedom of expression” to vindicate the struggle for the freedom of the Regime’s political prisoners.

“We didn’t interrupt the concert,” he says. According to his account, when the duo finished the second song, Nodarse got up and shouted “Israel Rojas.” In a matter of seconds, some men who were in the room ran towards them, surrounded them and began to beat them.

Arteaga Pérez reported that the agents punched and kicked them in various parts of their bodies and also snatched the cell phones with which they were transmitting. Spanish security walled them in and asked them to leave the room to continue the concert.

“But we said that without our phones we weren’t going to leave. One, because this is not Cuba, two because it is a crime and three because all our private information is there,” explains the doctor, who recalls that the agents committed a crime by trying to confiscate mobile phones in Europe.

“Miraculously people in the audience passed cell phones from hand to hand and they arrived at our table,” he said. At that time they decided to leave the room and called the Spanish police, who received the complaint, which is now under investigation.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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