The Spanish asylum system is failing Cubans

Only 38 Cubans have been granted refugee status in Spain during the entire year of 2025. In the same period, 311 applications were denied, and 998 files were closed, meaning they were shut without a substantive assessment.

These figures, far from being a technical detail, reveal a troubling trend: Spain is not accurately understanding the Cuban reality, neither in political nor humanitarian terms.

No Cuban has received Subsidiary Protection or Humanitarian Reasons so far this year. Not a single one. This would be surprising in a stable country; in the case of Cuba, a nation with systematic repression, criminalization of dissent, and a constant presence of political prisoners, it is simply incomprehensible.

Ironically, democratic or semi-democratic countries in the region have more protections granted and, in some cases, hundreds or thousands of humanitarian reasons. Meanwhile, Cuba appears on the chart with a complete zero.

The contrast is striking: 48,573 humanitarian reasons for Venezuelans, 230 for Peruvians, 299 for Colombians, in addition to dozens granted to citizens of countries with strong institutions, political alternation, and separation of powers.

If one looks at these data without political context, one might conclude that Spain considers Cuba to be a country less in need of protection than most of the continent. However, it is enough to observe reality, as well as historical records, to understand that this does not reflect the objective situation, but rather a particularly restrictive policy towards Cuban applicants.

The most shocking figure, however, is not in the approvals or the rejections, but in the cases that were archived. The 998 archived Cuban cases are not failed applications, but rather requests that were never evaluated.

A closed case file does not say "you have no reasons," but rather "your case was not examined." It reflects a system that, when overwhelmed, allows processes to expire, loses notifications, or misinterprets what is actually exhaustion, precariousness, or simple misinformation as withdrawal.

And there lies the paradox: while Cuba remains the oldest dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, Spain responds to the majority of its applicants not with protection, doubts, or even a formal rejection, but with an administrative closure that expels them from the system without having heard them. It is not denied because there are no reasons; it simply does not consider the case.

Official statistics paint a picture of a country that does not produce political exiles, but rather "incomplete files." A country whose migration flow is not analyzed, but managed through massive archives. A country that seemingly does not need protection, because its political, social, and repressive reality fails to be reflected in the forms of the Asylum Office.

Zero humanitarian reasons, very few protections, and almost a thousand unassessed cases form a clear pattern: the Spanish asylum system is not interpreting Cuban persecution with the rigor or coherence that the situation demands. And while repression on the island intensifies, international protection outside it weakens.

It is not a statistical issue; it is a political and humanitarian problem.

It not only questions the Spanish response; it questions the legitimacy of a system that, faced with one of the longest-standing and most repressive regimes in the region, prefers to close files rather than open its eyes.

And amidst those figures, those files, those endless waits that wear you down, there I am.

I am just one more on that long waiting list.