The Elcano Royal Institute, a Spanish think tank funded by private contributions and the government of socialist Pedro Sánchez, anticipates that the Cuban energy crisis will be "prolonged" and will worsen the "extreme situation" faced by the country. This is stated by researcher Ignacio Urbasos Arbeola in an article titled "Electrical and Political Blackout in Cuba," published in the Climate and Energy section.

"In the short term, the Cuban government lacks resources, which suggests a prolonged crisis, exacerbating the dire situation on the island," notes the expert.

Essentially, the report from the Elcano Institute identifies Cuba's "political blackout" as a "true obstacle" to the Island's progress. It attributes the constant power outages on the Island to Venezuela and the shutdown of floating power plants, and it believes that Trump will pressure Mexico to halt the oil shipments to Miguel Díaz-Canel's regime.

"The true obstacle to the progress of the Island continues to be the political blackout that Havana has faced for decades and the regime's inability to respond to each crisis," he concludes.

The worst crisis since the Special Period

According to the researcher from the Elcano Institute, Cuba is experiencing "its worst economic crisis since the Special Period in the 1990s." Evidence of this is that in October, Cubans faced some form of electricity rationing for 97% of the hours and an unprecedented massive blackout between the 18th and the 22nd of that month.

According to their explanation, the situation the country is facing could be "masked" in recent years due to oil shipments from Venezuela, but these began to decline starting in 2016, and the relationship worsened when in 2022, Biden allowed Venezuela to return to international markets.

In that context, the fire at the Matanzas supertanker occurred in August 2022, resulting in the regime losing more than a million barrels of oil. To this day, it has not managed to recover from that blow.

Since then, Mexico and Russia have replaced Venezuela as oil suppliers, but it is expected that with Trump's electoral victory and his return to the White House, Washington will threaten Pemex (Mexican state-owned oil company) by excluding it from the U.S. debt market if it continues to collaborate with the dictatorship, which will likely lead to a cut in aid.

The Elcano Institute is the same one that defined Cuba as a failed state in July 2023.