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government. The island’s leaders have expressed their gratitude for the commitment of Globalia – the tourism group owned by the Hidalgos – to maintaining its operations in Cuba, where it is also developing real estate projects.

Not everything seems to be going well for Air Europa this year: the company is under judicial investigation over the 475 million euro bailout it received from the Spanish state in 2020. Last June, a Madrid court admitted the criminal complaints filed by the PP and Vox over an alleged crime of administrative malfeasance.

In 2026, numerous airlines have suspended their flights to Cuba, reduced frequencies, or modified their operations due to the fuel shortage and falling demand. Some have had to add technical stopovers in third countries to refuel before continuing on to the island. Among the companies that have withdrawn are Air Canada, Air France, WestJet, Sunwing, Air Transat, Iberia, Latam Perú and Turkish Airlines.

“Flights to Havana, scheduled to begin on October 25, have been canceled”

The Turkish airline, which holds 26.5% of Air Europa’s capital after investing 300 million euros in the company at the end of last year, had recently announced the renewal of its Moscow-Istanbul-Havana route, a decision that had raised expectations about the recovery of the Russian tourist market in Cuba. However, it became known this Thursday that the company had decided to cancel that route. “Flights to Havana, scheduled to begin on October 25, have been canceled,” a Turkish Airlines spokesperson told Diario de Cuba. For now, the airline maintains its connection to Havana via Panama, where passengers must change planes to continue their journey with Copa Airlines.

The withdrawal of several airlines from Cuba has not been a direct consequence of US sanctions against companies linked to the regime, as some media outlets have suggested, but rather of the kerosene crisis, falling demand, and the collapse of tourism. These factors are related to the profound crisis affecting the island, worsened this year by Washington’s oil blockade against Cuba and OFAC sanctions against the economic pillars of the Cuban regime.

Air China, the other operator maintaining the Madrid-Havana route, retains two weekly frequencies. According to the reservation system, the Chinese state airline will maintain these operations until the summer of 2027. Iberia, for its part, has extended the suspension of its flights until July 2027, although it continues to offer connections to Havana via Panama City, with the final leg operated by Copa.

Translated by GH.

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respond to questions from doctors and nurses. He was taken to the 19th floor and immediately underwent vital-sign monitoring and other specialized tests.

So far, no official medical bulletin with a precise diagnosis has been released. Some Italian media have floated various hypotheses based on the intensity of the headaches and the temporary loss of consciousness, but neither Cuban nor Italian authorities have publicly confirmed the cause of the episode.

The newspaper itself confirmed that he was working on the island when he began to suffer “strange headaches” that grew progressively worse

Giorgia Meloni’s government is closely following the case and has a medically equipped plane on standby to repatriate Di Battista. The transfer will depend, however, on the doctors’ decision, who must determine whether the trip poses any risk to his health. Italy’s ambassador to Cuba, Simona De Martino, traveled to Santa Clara, while the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said he was in contact with the diplomatic mission and with the former lawmaker’s family.

Di Battista was not in Cuba on vacation. Having stayed away from Parliament for years, he has devoted himself to journalism, books and travel, and on this occasion was preparing a series of reports for Il Fatto Quotidiano and its audiovisual arm, TvLoft, titled La polvere del mondo (The Dust of the World). The newspaper itself confirmed that he was working on the island when he began to suffer “strange headaches” that grew progressively worse.

That the episode occurred in Santa Clara is particularly striking given the Italian’s political biography. Ansa recalled this Saturday that Ernesto Guevara is one of the figures Di Battista has championed for years. Of the Argentine guerrilla fighter, he once said he had left as a lesson what “the fervent will of a human being” can achieve.

‘La Razón’ highlighted his travels through Latin America and his profile as an agitator within the M5S.

The association between the two goes back a long way. In 2018, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia titled a profile on Di Battista The Return of the Che Grillino after he returned to Rome following more than six months traveling through the Americas. The paper recalled at the time that he had publicly recommended reading Che and Marx, and that he had even spoken of Guevara in the Italian Parliament as a man capable of making history by standing up to power.

A year later, another Spanish newspaper, La Razón, presented him outright as the “Italian Che Guevara,” after Di Battista and Luigi Di Maio staged an outreach to the French yellow vests that caused a serious diplomatic rift between Rome and Paris. The paper highlighted at the time his travels through Latin America and his profile as an agitator within the M5S.

He is currently vice president of Schierarsi, a political activism association that has driven campaigns related to Palestine.

Born in Rome in 1978, Di Battista was a lawmaker between 2013 and 2018 and became one of the M5S’s most charismatic leaders. His vehement style and his rhetoric against traditional politics gave him enormous popularity among the party’s grassroots, although he never held the main institutional posts.

He then progressively withdrew from the front line and broke with the M5S in 2021, in disagreement with the movement’s support for Mario Draghi’s government. He is currently vice president of Schierarsi, a political activism association that has driven campaigns related to Palestine, public water and other social causes.

Italian politics, despite deep divisions between parties, reacted in almost unanimous fashion to the news of his hospitalization. The M5S expressed its “great concern” and voiced solidarity with his family, while leaders from political forces on both the left and the right sent messages of support.

Translated by GH

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set product assortments, sales methods, and prices, to participate in public procurement, and to “create chains of stores, restaurants, and light food service networks of recognized or other brands that extend throughout the country.”

The Decree further orders the “promotion of public-private relations” and facilitation of the development of both domestic and foreign actors. For wholesalers, the language appears to be lifted directly from a market economy manual: they must consider “market signals,” study customers’ “tastes and preferences,” and favor domestic production whenever it is competitive “in quality, price, and timing.”

Meanwhile, provincial and municipal authorities are rolling out a new offensive of price caps, inspections, fines, seizures, forced sales, and closures

All this comes after Mônica Bergamo, of Folha de S.Paulo, asked Díaz-Canel directly whether it was necessary to “promote capitalism to save socialism.” “There are no capitalist reforms,” the president replied, invoking the precedent of the Special Period and recalling that Fidel Castro had accepted “concessions” at that time in order to preserve the Revolution and socialism.

The contradiction does not remain merely at the level of words. While the central government expands the space available to private businesses by decree, provincial and municipal authorities are rolling out a new offensive of price caps, limits on trade margins, inspections, fines, seizures, forced sales, and closures.

In June, as part of the 176 measures, the Government had announced the general elimination of price caps. Not even two months had passed before Artemisa, Matanzas, Holguín, and other territories began setting maximum trade margins of 30%, while municipalities in Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, and other provinces imposed maximum prices or, under another name, “reference” prices.

Resolution 15 repeals the rules with which the Ministry of Domestic Trade itself tightened wholesale trade for MSMEs, cooperatives, and self-employed workers in 2024

Nor has the result been unexpected. In some places, products subject to greater administrative pressure, such as cooking oil, have disappeared from stores or returned to the informal market at higher prices.

The Gazette itself unwittingly sums up this ambivalence. Alongside competition and market signals, Decree 167 enshrines “centralized administrative measures” intended to induce economic actors to make decisions “in line with the interests of society.” It also reserves for the State the ability to introduce restrictions or prohibitions and to intervene in price formation in the name of “social interest.”

Even one of the resolutions published this Friday acknowledges another about-face. Resolution 15 repeals the rules with which the Ministry of Domestic Trade itself tightened wholesale trade for MSMEs, cooperatives, and self-employed workers in 2024. It now deems it necessary to “ease” those regulations.

This looping pattern also has precedents. In 1986, Fidel Castro launched the “Rectification of Errors and Negative Tendencies,” initially aimed at economic mechanisms that the leadership considered deviations from socialism. Decades later, the Ordering Task (Tarea Ordenamiento) was again presented as the solution to distortions accumulated over years. Beginning in January 2021, it was meant, among other things, to end monetary duality and restore the Cuban peso’s central role in the economy. Barely a month after it took effect, Granma was already publishing an article titled “Prices and Cost Cards: ‘Ordering’ the Ordering Task,” while the Government introduced new mechanisms to contain prices that had exceeded its projections.

The Cuban economy remains trapped in the same pendulum swing: opening up when the crisis leaves no alternative, correcting course when the opening threatens to escape control, and opening up again when the restrictions produce a new suffocation

Five years later, the new commercial legislation in fact enshrines another dual system. Decree 168, within the same Gazette, divides the Central Commercial Registry into two sections – one for “Cuban Pesos” and another for “Foreign Currency” – and requires establishments that sell in both currencies to hold a license for each. Registering or re-registering a business that operates in foreign currency can cost $500, updating its records $370, and obtaining a duplicate license $450, while the same procedures cost 1,300, 600, and 1,000 Cuban pesos, respectively, for those operating in national currency. Resolution 195 itself justifies these fees on the grounds of “partial dollarization in inter-enterprise and commercial operations.”

After six decades, the Cuban economy remains trapped in the same pendulum swing: opening up when the crisis leaves no alternative, correcting course when the opening threatens to escape control, and opening up again when the restrictions produce a new suffocation.

Translated by GH.

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bring her social media posts to the sector chief on a claim of “defamation.” Activist Tania Tasé, who has followed the case and remains in contact with the family, says she has identified this official as Yanelis, a delegate of the Poder Popular (People’s Power) and a lieutenant colonel in the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

In a message sent to Tasé during her niece’s illness, Companioni said that “the water truck and the delegate” passed by her house some days without stopping. “She only stops when she’s paid, and as soon as I have proof I’m going to file a formal complaint,” she wrote.

Companioni also reported that at Aballí hospital “there isn’t even drinking water for the children”

The situation worsened as an eight-year-old niece of Companioni’s grew sicker after several days of vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. The family took her repeatedly to the Ángel Arturo Aballí Maternal and Child Hospital and to the William Soler hospital, but she was initially sent home. After vomiting bile with traces of blood and, later, developing bleeding gums, she was finally admitted, and tests determined that she had dengue with warning signs and, according to relatives, several inflamed organs, meaning she needed to be transferred to a pediatric facility with intensive care. Companioni also reported that at the Aballí hospital “there isn’t even drinking water for the children, literally.”

While the girl remained hospitalized, the family continued to have no regular water supply at home. Companioni said they even relied on collecting rainwater. “Today at home we don’t have a single drop of water, because it hasn’t rained,” she wrote to Tasé. “I’m not going to stay silent in the face of so much shamelessness and helplessness,” she added.

The government’s own leadership acknowledged the severity of the problem this week. On Thursday, Miguel Díaz-Canel visited the Paso Seco water supply source in Boyeros, a strategic point for pumping water to the southern and central parts of Havana. The official press acknowledged that the facility had entered a “critical situation” and that work is underway to restore equipment, motors, and power lines to sustain service during the prolonged blackouts. The president had ordered that “permanent protection” be sought for the water supply of the capital, home to nearly two million people.

A day later, the United States Embassy in Havana issued a health alert warning that Cuba’s water supply infrastructure is “increasingly unstable” and that there are residential neighborhoods that go long periods without receiving water from the municipal networks. The diplomatic mission noted that the supply problems, worsened by the blackouts and the drought, pose “significant challenges for health and safety.” That same Friday, police detained Companioni, whose protest had begun precisely over one of those prolonged water cutoffs.

A conflict presented as a neighborhood dispute is serving to conceal a reprisal that is political in nature

The conflict began in early August, when the woman reported that her family had gone about 15 days without water service. She went to the municipal government’s command post and to other institutions, including the Communist Party headquarters, without obtaining an effective solution. Days later, a state water truck arrived on her block. Neighbors were able to fill their containers, but she was denied water. When she tried to film the scene, an official warned her that she could be detained if she continued photographing or filming what was happening.

The sequence of events now makes it difficult to reduce the case to a simple neighborhood dispute. That she was detained by a group of police officers that included Search and Capture personnel and high-ranking officers, after weeks of public complaints against local authorities, shows the significance that has been attached to the case. In addition, the reference to an official linked to the FAR, the prior threats, and the speed with which an alleged accusation of “defamation” turned into an arrest all support the belief that a conflict presented as a neighborhood dispute is serving to conceal a reprisal that is political in nature.

Companioni had not led an organized protest or issued any opposition call to action. She had demanded something more basic: water for her home while a girl in her family was seriously ill. And despite admitting her fears, she had made clear she did not intend to stay silent.
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using that same term. On July 14, the shutdown of Felton’s unit 1 caused, according to the official version, a “sharp oscillation in the system’s frequency” that ended in another total blackout.

In early August it happened again. As the country was still trying to recover from the year’s sixth national collapse, rain and electrical storms caused an oscillation that brought down the system once more – the second collapse in less than 24 hours.

In total, the SEN has already suffered seven complete disconnections so far in 2026, in addition to several large-scale partial separations. The first national blackout occurred on March 16. After that came the one on March 21, three in July – on the 6th, 10th, and 14th – and two consecutive ones in early August.

The recurrence of these oscillations takes on particular significance at a time when the Government is rapidly incorporating photovoltaic generation into a grid that operates with very little reserve and numerous damaged thermoelectric plants

These collapses are in addition to regional breakdowns such as the one that left western Cuba without electricity for nearly seven hours on August 1, affecting Pinar del Río, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Havana, and Matanzas.

The recurrence of these oscillations takes on particular significance at a time when the Government is rapidly incorporating photovoltaic generation into a grid that operates with very little reserve and numerous damaged thermoelectric plants. Based on the information available, solar energy cannot be identified as the cause of Thursday’s incident, but the authorities themselves have acknowledged the problems involved in compensating for fluctuations without the anchor of the thermoelectric plants that are essential to ensuring the SEN’s stability.

Miguel Díaz-Canel  admitted in March that instability was such that not all the energy available at solar farms could be used during the day. Its connection had to be increased or reduced, he explained, in order to regulate frequency and “avoid another blackout.” The president then announced the installation of battery systems intended precisely for that function.

The problem does not lie in solar energy itself, but in integrating it into a weakened grid. Traditional thermoelectric plants provide synchronous generation and help cushion sudden frequency changes, while photovoltaic farms depend on electronic inverters and their output can vary rapidly. Modern systems compensate for these fluctuations through batteries, electronic regulation, and sufficient generation reserve – elements that Cuba has only to a very limited extent.

In Cuba, where the loss of a single large unit can represent a significant share of all available generation, the margin for absorbing a disturbance is very limited

During the recovery from July’s blackout, the Director General of Electricity, Lázaro Guerra, specifically highlighted the importance of the batteries installed in El Cotorro (Havana), capable of “regulating the frequency” of the small systems that were forming before the national grid was reconnected.

Thursday’s incident now requires clarifying what happened first. Official information does not specify which line began to oscillate, what type of disturbance occurred, or whether the shutdown of Felton, Nuevitas, and Renté was the cause or the consequence of the instability. Nor has any information been provided on how much photovoltaic generation the SEN was delivering at that time.

These questions take on special relevance following the blackout in Spain and Portugal on April 28, 2025, whose investigation showed just how quickly oscillations, voltage problems, and cascading disconnections can spread through an electrical grid. In Cuba, where the loss of a single large unit can represent a significant share of all available generation, the margin for absorbing a disturbance is much smaller.

Translated by GH.

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entities on the island from regularly meeting their debts to foreign companies. When asked what would need to change to win the business back, Mirer likewise does not mention only sanctions: “First there is legal certainty, followed by real protection for foreign companies and, finally, the currency issue.”

The numbers bear out the pessimism. Swiss exports of paper and cardboard to Cuba exceeded 2.7 million francs in 2025, but in the first half of this year they barely reached one million. Watch sales fell from 1.4 million to just over 357,000 francs (1 Swiss franc is equivalent to 1.23 dollars), and pharmaceutical sales stayed below 9,000 francs between January and June. Small and medium-sized companies, less able to withstand payment delays, have been scaling back their activity or leaving the Cuban market outright. Among the large companies that remain are Nestlé (food) and Roche (pharmaceuticals).

“One of the companies still holding on, Nestlé, has known the problem since the early years of the Revolution”

The outlook was considerably brighter just seven months ago. During a business gathering held in late January in Havana, Harold Hoffman, vice president of the Chamber, told the state broadcaster Radio Progreso that Cuba offered opportunities because its market was “quite promising,” something Swiss business owners needed to “take advantage of.” The event aimed precisely to encourage foreign investment and expand business ties.

The Swiss Embassy itself, under whose sponsorship the Swiss Business Night was held, was somewhat more cautious at the time. The focus of that meeting was Cuba’s energy crisis, described by the diplomatic mission as a “real operational vulnerability” that affects production, raises costs and “curbs investment.” The panel was moderated by Oniel Díaz Castellanos, co-founder of Auge and a collaborator with that business circle before formally joining the Chamber.

The difficulties in convincing Swiss business owners of the merits of the Cuban market are not new either. One of the companies still holding on, Nestlé, has known the problem since the early years of the Revolution.

Before “going far” in Cuba, the challenge can be much more basic: getting paid

In October 1960, Fidel Castro’s government nationalized three food companies with significant interests belonging to the Swiss multinational. After years of negotiations, Havana and Bern reached an agreement in 1967 for 18,039,000 Swiss francs to compensate for property, rights and other interests affected by the revolutionary measures.

Switzerland committed to purchasing 40,000 tons of Cuban sugar annually for eight years, with part of that revenue used to pay off the compensation. In this way, Cuba was able to compensate those affected while simultaneously securing a buyer, obtaining foreign currency and preserving an economic link with a major foreign company.

Almost six decades later, the words have changed less than the problems. Cuba needs buyers, investment and hard currency more than ever, while foreign companies are once again demanding guarantees to get their money back. U.S. sanctions make transfers far more difficult today and explain a significant part of the deterioration, but even business representatives interested in maintaining ties with the island point to internal problems that Washington cannot solve.

Auge, meanwhile, prefers to see the glass as half full. Its new membership, the consultancy stated, will help “invigorate the way we do things” and allow its clients to worry only “about going far.” The experience of some of its new Swiss partners suggests that, before going far in Cuba, the challenge can be much more basic: getting paid.

Translated by GH

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it can complete its life cycle – first by existing, and then by reaching the reader.”

For its part, the Prize organization noted that “through his writing, Leonardo Padura has turned Cuban reality into literary material of international reach.” His body of work, it continues, “marked by social criticism and a deep attention to Cuba’s recent history, offers a complex view of the memory, utopias, and disillusionments of several generations.”

Born in Havana in 1955 and winner of the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the writer has received numerous honors, among them the Café Gijón, the Dashiell Hammett, the Islas 2000, the Brigada 21, the Barcino Historical Novel Prize, and the 2023 Pepe Carvalho Prize.

His career is especially notable for his series of detective novels featuring Inspector Mario Conde – whose most recent installment was Personas decentes (2022), set during the 2016 thaw in relations between the US and Cuba – and El hombre que amaba los perros (2009), about Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader.

His most recent work is Morir en la arena, featuring Rodolfo, a recently retired man in Havana whose life is marked by the war in Angola and by his father’s murder at the hands of his own brother. Before that, he published Como polvo en el viento (2020), centered on the drama of exile through several characters.

The award ceremony will take place on September 30 at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), during the Liber International Book Fair, an event aimed at industry professionals, which in 2026 will be held in Barcelona from September 29 to October 1.

Translated by GH

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