“We remain unsheltered, homeless, and seeing no real progress in the reconstruction of our building.”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, May 6, 2025 — A massive police presence could be observed around the former Saratoga Hotel and an adjacent building on Tuesday, three years after an explosion destroyed both structures and left forty-seven people dead. The resources employed by authorities to monitor the site on the anniversary of the accident were inversely proportional to the attention given to the demands of the evacuated residents, who took advantage of the opportunity to publicly express their grievances.
“As a resident of 609 Prado Street, I am posting this message to denounce the complete neglect of the victims by authorities,” writes Bárbara del Carmen Tenreyro Pérez on her Facebook page, summing up the situation of the building’s former residents. “We have been unsheltered and homeless for the last three years, and have seen no real progress in the reconstruction of our building.” In fact, residents say, work has been at a standstill for the last six months.
What remained of the building after the explosion was demolished in May 2023. A few months later, the government assured residents they would be able to return to their homes in 2025, claiming they would be rebuilt in the same location. “What they promised were just empty words. The official date for the building’s completion.
Nor has there ever been a full explanation of what happened. Authorities initially attributed the incident to possible leaks in the hose of a tanker truck that was supplying liquefied natural gas to the hotel at the time of the explosion. An investigation was promised but no findings were ever released. “What is most painful is the silence,” said Tenreyro. “No one tells us anything, no one helps us, no one responds to our concerns.” Her post included several photos showing the scene before and after the incident.
Using the same images to illustrate her own comments on the situation, Katherine T. Gavilán writes, “Another May 6th [has come around] and they are still homeless. Some have decided to leave the country while most are still living in Villa Panamericana. The relatives of those killed in the incident and everyone else are still awaiting the results of an investigation but there is no news.”
Gavilán notes that, two years ago, families who had been living in the building’s twenty-seven apartments were informed that “they would be able to return to their homes by August 2025.” She adds that residents delivered letters to the local government, the National Assembly and the hotel’s owner, the Business Administration Group (GAESA), last year.
GAESA, the owner of the hotel, told residents that it “had nothing to do with matter”
GAESA, a business conglomerate run by the Cuban military, has owned the hotel since 2016, when it was seized from Habaguanex, a business subsidiary of Havana’s once all-powerful Office of the Historian, headed by the late Eusebio Leal. According to Gavilán, GAESA told residents that it “had nothing to do with the matter.” They received no response from the other two government entities other than to say that “the person in charge of the issue was the Havana government’s head of construction.”
Gavilán adds, “A little less than a month ago, one of the residents, acting on behalf of the entire building, requested a meeting with Namán Morales, the official in charge. Morales’s aide said she would discuss the matter with him and would call back in a few days. The following week, the aide said that she had not been able to speak with him. Gavilán got the same response fifteen days days after her initial contact.”
If the authorities had taken any steps, we would have heard about it. It has been well over a year since they have given us any information,” she complains, adding that none of the various government agencies responded to letters that one resident delivered to them in person.
“Initially, they provided a bus for us here but took it away because there was no fuel
They tried to deliver another letter to the Communist Party Central Committee on Monday but were unable to do so due to lack of transportation from the area where they are being housed. “Initially, we had a bus. It took us from the Villa every day and brought us back in the evening. But they took it away because they they didn’t have the fuel to keep it running,” she says.
The biggest problem in Villa Panamericana is not transportation, however, but running water. “Here, water here is only available here one or two times a day, for an hour. That’s when we have to fill tanks, jars and plastic jugs to last us the whole day. It’s what we use for the bathroom, for bathing, cooking, cleaning, for everything.”
Living conditions for the former residents vary, along with their complaints. “One neighbor had a swarm of rats. To shut her up, they sent an exterminator but no one fixed the furniture the rats had been eating. Others have had serious problems with leaks. Others with termites, even in the doors and windows.”
Work stopped last November, “after they poured the foundation,” she says. “There was never an explanation as to what caused the accident. They have never given us that information and we’re tired of asking for it.”
Residents were told that “construction would begin on February 24 and would be completed by December 25, that the building would go up quickly. Now look at where we are.” Work has been stalled since November, “after they poured the foundation,” she says.
A photo posted by residents on social media on Tuesday shows a hole in the foundation of 609 Prado Street, with bare concrete and stacks of rebars left here and there. Gavilán estimates it was taken in late December or early January” from the roof of the adjoining building, the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba. “No one else has been able to take photos [since then] because they covered up that little hole.”
Located a few yards from Havana’s Capitol building, the site would normally be considered very desirable. Before the explosion, several families made money by renting out rooms to tourists but have been unable to do so for the last three years. The move to East Havana has not only deprived them of this economic opportunity, it has also completely cut them off from the retail network they relied upon and from the schools their children attended.
Meanwhile, reconstruction on the iconic Saratoga has also come to a standstill. Almest, a real estate developer affiliated with the the Armed Forces ministry, was tasked by the government to carry out the work in conjunction with an an unnamed French company, widely believed to be based in the city of Bouygues and to have worked on the construction of twenty-two luxury hotels on the island.
On the first anniversary of accident last year, Cuban architect Luis Ángel Gil, who now lives in Spain, shared a proposal on social media for renovating the hotel. He proposed a new name, Kairós Saratoga, after the classical Greek words for “opportune moment.”
His basic idea was that the building would act “like a horizontal opening” so that “users would not feel enclosed by walls and could enjoy the excellent views the site has to offer.” To achieve this, he proposed incorporating “a vertical park” that would serve as “a natural extension of the existing public space,” enveloping the building and “strengthening the connection between architecture and nature.”
This proposal, ignored by authorities like the still unknown plan that officials might have, seems to being lying dormant in a drawer somewhere.
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