Twenty years after an idyllic first trip to the island, Marina from Spain discovers a destroyed country and deplorable service in five-star hotels.
14ymedio, Yaiza Santos, Madrid, 1 October 2025 — Mountains of garbage on street corners, power outages, expensive hotels with insufficient food, towels with holes, mosquito infestations, beggars, sad streets, and people everywhere with only one plan: to leave Cuba. The island Marina visited this summer with her family bears little resemblance to the one she saw in 2004.
With that idyllic memory in mind, last August she booked a trip that included Havana and Cayo Santa María (Villa Clara) through an agency in her hometown in Andalusia, which she prefers to withhold. The experience, however, was so disastrous that the group filed a complaint with the tour operator upon their return.
To begin with, they were greeted at José Martí International Airport by a power outage , something she hadn’t expected to experience in the terminal itself and something that was unthinkable twenty years ago. Once in the capital, they were surprised by the uncollected trash everywhere. “The stench it transmits is unbearable,” she told 14ymedio. “And it’s a hotbed of disease, really.”
The palpable hunger also cconfused her, specifically the line of elderly people, women and children at the doors of El Asturianito
The palpable hunger also confused her, specifically the line of elderly people, women, and children outside El Asturianito, waiting for the employees of the popular restaurant, located across from the Capitol, to distribute the customers’ leftovers. “We didn’t see that the other time, we didn’t see that.”
Marina never imagined that in two decades, the historic center had not only not improved, but had worsened to the point of complete disrepair. Nor that the city would no longer be that place where old-fashioned Cuban music flowed from every corner: “Havana was filled with live musicians playing everywhere all day long, and now we could only enjoy that at Floridita and La Bodeguita del Medio, and that’s it.” Nor did she imagine they would barely encounter any foreign visitors.
“We asked what was happening, why everything was so abandoned, and they told us that tourism was run directly by the Armed Forces, and since the Armed Forces started managing it, it has been deteriorating a lot,” says Marina, without knowing for sure that, in 2016, the military had indeed taken over the most successful companies from Habaguanex — a subsidiary of the Historian’s Office then headed by Eusebio Leal — and placed them under the umbrella of the Business Administration Group (Gaesa).
Marina found the absence of tourists even more striking at the Hotel Nacional, where they stayed overnight, just as she had the first time she visited Cuba, at a time when Cubans were banned from these establishments. The lack of international guests contrasted with the number of Havana residents “who came to have a drink, listen to music, and also quite a few who went to the pool.” What the guides told them was that these occasional hotel guests “are rather sympathetic to the government.”
Not everyone can afford the 6,000 pesos per person (almost $14 at the informal exchange rate) entrance fee to the National Stadium pool — 4,000 of which is for compulsory food service — when the average monthly salary doesn’t reach 7,000.
“We felt the weight of the State there. Everyone was silent. We tried to talk to people, but they were secretive.”
Dollarization is something that also shocked Marina, who says that money changers approached them inside the hotel. “People came up to us and said, ‘If you want to change, I’ll give you the exact amount,’” she explains. And that “exchange” coincided with the information reported daily by El Toque. How is it possible that a state-run establishment offers to buy foreign currency on the cheap? Marina explains that she saw the situation as “delicate”: “We felt the weight of the state there; everyone was silent. We tried to talk to people, and they were secretive.” That said, she says, was like 20 years ago.
Very different from ordinary Cubans, who, unlike in 2004, dare to talk about everything. “They knew exactly what was happening in Spain, because everyone wants to come here, and they ranted about how it’s impossible to stay there anymore, that it’s terrible.”
“Every now and then you’d find someone who’d say, ‘I’m going to Spain on such and such a date,’ or ‘I already have a flight, I’m going to Huelva, my wife is waiting for me, she’s been there for two months, and my daughter is already at school,’ or ‘I got a job as a glazier thanks to some friends I have there,’” Marina continues, highlighting the exodus taking place because of the Democratic Memory Law, which grants Spanish nationality to descendants of emigrants and whose application period expires this month. “They were very overwhelmed because they had to expedite all the paperwork, because it ends in October.”
The stories of the people she encountered gave meaning to something she observed on the plane to and from Madrid: “There were far more Cubans than there were tourists.”
“We were eating yogurts that were warm and ice creams that were completely melted.”
There were no blackouts in Havana, she says, something the hotel staff had already assured her: “They told us their power outages were minimal because they had their own generators, something others did not. In fact, on the second day we saw the NH [the Capri] completely dark, it was about 9 p.m. I imagine the people there would be affected by that situation.”
Regarding the hotel’s conditions, she says among the friends in the group everyone was saying, “Look, we paid so much, and this is like a three- or four-star hotel, because of course, the maintenance is good, but not what it should be.” They couldn’t have imagined that the worst was yet to come, in Cayo Santa María, where they stayed not in just any hotel, but in one that bills itself as five-star: Iberostar Selection Ensenachos. “The Nacional is ultra-luxurious in comparison!” she asserts.
“We were very surprised by the total neglect of maintenance,” says Marina. She lists: “The gardens with green puddles, with millions of mosquitoes swarming and biting like crazy, the blue crabs from the mangroves invading everything, taking over the complex, some tiny black birds that look like little crows [totíes] on the tables taking food…”
Being a Spanish hotel, the woman denounces, “European standards are not being met there.” The contrast with the first time she stayed at the same establishment was glaring. “Back then, everything seemed quite clean, very, very proper. Not now: they cover your plate with a piece of plastic wrap . It doesn’t have the required refrigeration. We were eating hot yogurts and completely melted ice cream.” The fact that the presentation of the dishes was crumbly and there was no one there to fix it was the least of the problems.
“They don’t have any staff. They’re maintained by four people who are already bitter and have no desire.”
There wasn’t even enough food at the all-you-can-eat buffet. “When we arrived and went to the restaurant, they told us: ‘Everything’s gone, all we have left are two sausages and two hamburgers.’” There were six people in the group. Every day, they saw that there was always the same food: hamburger, sausage, and chicken; at most, some fish. “What was happening? The sauces changed, the colors changed, but it was always the same. It was junk food,” she says. “One day I ordered a salad, and I think they took the salad from the trash can and put it on my plate, because it was so horrible.” The group’s biggest fear was getting gastroenteritis or, worse, dengue fever.
Marina continues with the grim anecdotes: “Everywhere, so dirty. The towels had holes in them. In the bathroom, a tiny little soap, not even wrapped. In a five-star hotel!” In a way, she saw the logic behind what was happening, “because they don’t have staff. It’s maintained by four people who are already bitter and have no desire.”
On the second day, they began to think about leaving, and on the third, they spoke with their agency in Spain about moving their departure a day earlier. They paid for the night they were supposed to spend in Ensenachos, according to their package, out of pocket at the Nacional, back in Havana. More than 200 euros.
“We’ve demanded that our travel agency at least refund us the money for the night we didn’t stay in the Keys,” she laments. “And we’ve also told them that what happened to us, what they’re doing to the tourists, is scamming.” A small agency, she continues, can’t afford to send people to places without information. “Why do tour operators continue selling travel packages knowing that the power is out, that not enough food is arriving, that the hotel complexes are abandoned?”
Abandoned “like ghost ships,” she says, giving as an example the Iberostar Selection Havana , which occupies the tallest building in the city, the controversial Torre K. “They told us that it was paid for with government money, that it cost I don’t know how many millions of dollars, and that they’ve given it to Iberostar to manage. But from the outside it looked like it was closed, we didn’t see much movement,” asserts Marina, who adds: “But I would never go there in my life, because it scares me, it’s a horrible place.”
The woman confesses that she had read in the press that things in Cuba were bad, “but not that bad.” The testimony she gives to 14ymedio, in any case, illustrates firsthand the official figures that, month by month, account for the dwindling tourism . Between January and August of this year, Cuba received a total of 1,259,972 international visitors, 21.64% fewer than the same period in 2024, while in the boom years, between 2015 and 2019, more than double that number arrived.
What she said also illustrates the difficult situation facing Spanish hotel chains on the island, notably Meliá and Iberostar, about which Cinco Días published a harsh article last month. For this financial daily, these tourism giants, who, despite all odds against them, “continue to redouble their commitment to maintaining and growing in Cuba,” had been hit by a “perfect storm.” There’s no way they can make ends meet on the island.
Thus, the Barceló group, also Spanish, awarded a trip to Cuba this past September to a total of 400 of its travel agents from Spain and Portugal as a reward for having promoted sales to the island since the beginning of the year. This news may answer Marina’s questions about the tour operators’ practices.
Despite everything, she maintains that she will return. “Because I love it, because nature is a luxury, because that is the future of Cuba,” she explains. “But of course, I will return when I am no longer being ripped off.”
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