In the lives of ordinary Cubans, there are two unwritten rules. The first is to manage—to make a living however possible. The second is not to get upset. That is: to maintain composure even when everything is wrong. But in recent hours, both precepts have been pushed to the limit. Suffocated by U.S. sanctions and cornered by decades of mismanagement, the islanders have seen how, even after hitting rock bottom, a new sinkhole always opens up. In a matter of hours, the country has suffered the umpteenth total collapse of the National Electric System (SEN). The second in less than a day, the seventh in 2026, and the eleventh in the last two years.
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In Cuba, the country that has learned to live with anomalies better than anyone, turning on a light bulb is already an act of fiction. The most recent proof occurred on Monday. The new general blackout, which left the island’s nine million inhabitants without power, happened while operators of the state electric company were working to restore service after the SEN collapse recorded on Sunday night. The Electric Union company (UNE) confirmed the worst fears when barely 14% of Havana—with about two million residents—had recovered power. That same weekend, the energy system had suffered a partial disconnection that left half the island in darkness.
It is the never-ending story. Cubans, with their characteristic sarcasm, were already joking beforehand that it is impossible to distinguish between a normal day and one in which the SEN collapses. Milagros, 38 years old, mother of two girls and a resident of Matanzas (west), could not find out until much later that the grid had collapsed. “The system went down three days ago. That’s what I heard. At that moment, when it went down, we had no power. And, without power, we didn’t know if it was real. Mobile phones lose service, whether coverage or data connection. God forbid, but if an emergency happens, one is cut off,” she tells EL PAÍS by phone.
The SEN collapses
The grid collapses should not be confused with blackouts. In the first case, the system collapses, so not a single megawatt (MW) is generated throughout the territory. Blackouts, on the other hand, occur daily. They are due to the country’s inability to generate enough electricity to cover consumption. Or due to some specific failure. In recent weeks, daily interruptions exceeded 20 hours in Havana and reached up to 72 consecutive hours—yes, three full days—in other provinces.
According to the government, the latest grid collapse was caused by “weather events” that affected the system, which “directly impacted the generating units that were online.” For Cuban expert and researcher at the University of Texas Energy Institute Jorge Piñón, the latest grid problems “are not just technical failures,” but something more worrying. “[The complications have been in] the transmission lines, which in Cuba are connected to each other like domino pieces. If you knock down the first, all fall. You can have generation, but if you don’t have the cables to deliver that electricity to consumers, it’s useless,” he explains.
Washington’s maximum pressure campaign, with Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the spearhead, has shaken a system with chronic underfunding problems. The American checkmate is divided into two acts: the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela—its main fuel supplier—and the blockade of any tanker attempting to supply Havana under Donald Trump’s tariff threat. Both moves occurred at the beginning of the year. And they have worsened—the already precarious energy situation even more. Not to mention the warmongering speeches of the Republican against the island.
An analysis conducted by this newspaper at the end of May, based on official data, showed the immediate effect of the sanctions. Generation dropped 20% between January and February. Blackouts in Havana went from an average of four hours to 18 daily. On the other hand, the arrival in March of the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin, the last to dock on the island and which delivered more than 700,000 barrels—Cuba needs 110,000 barrels daily to operate normally—caused blackouts to drop drastically in April. The deficit fell by 50%, but it was exhausted to the last drop.
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Economic reforms
As a panic maneuver, the government ignored six decades of speeches against private initiative and allowed small entrepreneurs to import limited amounts of fuel. It also recently approved the operation of private gas stations. These contradictions are striking in the year the revolution celebrates the centenary of the birth of its late leader, Fidel Castro, and approaches the date marking the tenth anniversary of his death.
The current crisis has also revealed great economic inequalities. A country divided between those who have access to foreign currency, either through relatives abroad or by owning private businesses, and those who live in the shadows and suffocated by the heat of the Cuban summer. For Maribel Villalonga, a 65-year-old resident of Matanzas, the greatest comfort is that the food in the refrigerator does not spoil because she has an electric generator sent from the United States. “Imagine, yesterday the system went down and still in the circuit where I live there is no power. There are days that go by completely, 24 hours, without power. Sometimes more,” she complains.
The timid economic opening, forced by circumstances, has not changed the underlying problem. Generating electricity has always been a headache, even before the White House’s sanctions onslaught. The backbone of the SEN rests on the 16 units of the thermoelectric plants—from the Soviet era—that have completely exceeded their useful life, estimated by experts at 35 years, and the diesel and fuel oil engines scattered throughout the country. Both account for 80% of the mix.
In short, the oil blockade has cornered the system. In fact, all diesel and fuel oil generators are completely stopped. Piñón assures, however, that it is a self-inflicted problem. The expert recalls the historically low investment in the industry, the lack of maintenance, and the wear caused by using Cuban crude, with a very high sulfur content, in the generating plants. “What is very clear is that the thermoelectric plants are not directly impacted by the lack of fuel as a result of the United States blockade,” he states.
Several independent analysts outside the island, like Piñón, warn that the situation is so serious that even if Washington decided to lift the energy embargo today, the long blackouts would continue. Reviving the industry would require about 10 billion dollars, a figure Cuba does not have. The serious situation, which the regime equates to that of a war economy, has completely paralyzed the little economic activity. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimates that GDP will contract at least 6.5% this year. And in the last five years, there has been a cumulative drop of 15%.
Amid it all, Cubans continue managing without getting upset. Milagros’s youngest daughter, eight years old, “has spent three whole nights just screaming, sweating [from the extreme summer heat], and not sleeping.” “And on top of that, there is no water, because under normal conditions they don’t supply water, imagine without power,” she concludes.
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