Cuba’s national power grid collapsed on Tuesday for the third time in less than 10 days, plunging the island into another nationwide blackout, according to the state-run electricity company.
The National Electric Union (UNE) said the grid failed completely at about 11:05 a.m. local time (1505 GMT). Authorities did not immediately disclose the cause of the outage.
It is the third nationwide blackout since early July and the fifth recorded in Cuba since the start of 2026.
“I have no words,” 62-year-old housewife Maria Caridad Alvarez told AFP.
“When I woke up this morning, the power was back and I cooked some beans. Now, I went out and it’s off again. It feels like there is no solution.”
Another resident, 82-year-old retiree David Matias Rodriguez, said he feared the food in his refrigerator would spoil.
Cuba is grappling with its worst economic crisis in decades, worsened by persistent fuel shortages that have severely strained electricity generation and distribution.
Following last week’s blackouts, it took authorities more than 24 hours to restore power across the island of 9.6 million people, with fuel shortages slowing the recovery process.
In Havana, some neighbourhoods endured power cuts lasting more than 30 hours, while residents in several provinces waited days before electricity was fully restored.
The repeated outages have triggered growing public frustration, with residents in some of the worst-hit communities staging spontaneous protests by banging pots and pans and setting piles of rubbish ablaze.
According to UNE, chronic fuel shortages have left the national grid increasingly vulnerable to widespread failures while also limiting the use of emergency power generators.
Relations between Havana and Washington have remained strained, with the United States maintaining economic sanctions that Cuba says have compounded its energy and economic challenges.
The Trump administration has also expanded sanctions targeting Cuban state-owned enterprises, prompting several foreign companies to scale back or suspend operations on the island.
Late last month, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said there had been “no progress” in months of bilateral discussions between Havana and Washington.
AFP
