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The Electric Union (UNE) announced early this Monday that electrical service has been restored in Eastern Cuba, following more than six hours of a widespread blackout in the region.
According to the official report on the social media of the state-owned company, the system was fully reconnected at 1:25 a.m., which had collapsed since the night of Sunday, September 7.
The incident, which affected provinces from Las Tunas to Guantánamo, occurred at 7:37 p.m., when the 220 kV Nuevitas-Tunas line was triggered, causing a total disconnection of the eastern system.
As a result, millions of people were left without electricity, which sparked spontaneous protests in cities like Santiago de Cuba, where residents held a pot-banging demonstration demanding the restoration of service.
During the night, technical brigades from the UNE worked on the gradual reconnection of the system, first energizing Las Tunas and Camagüey, then Holguín, and finally Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
Meanwhile, there were reported issues at the Mariel thermoelectric plant in the west, where unit 6 went out of service, and it is expected to be reactivated in the coming hours.
The electrical collapse occurs amid a chronic generation deficit that regularly exceeds 1,700 MW and has characterized the daily lives of Cubans with blackouts lasting between 8 and 16 hours.
The UNE has not specified the exact causes of the transmission line outage, although official reports indicated adverse weather conditions in the area.
With the service restored throughout the east, doubts and citizen frustration persist regarding an electrical system in crisis and increasingly vulnerable to further collapses.
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