A Cuban woman identified as Yanela posted a video on TikTok this Saturday showing her father crying in a supermarket on his first day in Spain, and the clip has already garnered more than 2.2 million views in less than 48 hours.
The description accompanying the recording says it all: "Day 1 in Spain, first stop is the supermarket. I cry from the excitement or from the feeling of seeing so many things."
In the images, Yanela's father —whose TikTok account is @yane_cubana— cannot hold back his tears in front of the shelves filled with products, a scene that seems ordinary to anyone outside of Cuba, but represents a stark contrast for someone coming from the island.
The video has 223,300 likes, over 2,100 comments, and has been shared 6,010 times. Among the user reactions, phrases such as "He deserves that and much more" and "This gentleman makes me feel very warm inside" stand out, reflecting the massive emotional response generated by the clip both within the Cuban diaspora and the general public.
The scene involving Yanela's father is not an isolated case. In recent years, videos of Cubans becoming emotional—often to the point of tears—when visiting supermarkets abroad have become a recurring phenomenon on TikTok. In April 2025, a Cuban grandmother aged 87 cried upon entering a supermarket in Spain for the first time, amazed as she asked: "Are these pizzas?" and "Is that coquito? Do you know how much that costs in Cuba?". In November 2025, a Cuban became emotional in a supermarket in Miami, expressing: "I almost lost my life, but it was worth it."
Behind these reactions lies a devastating reality. Cuba is going through a chronic food crisis: the island's supermarkets have had empty or nearly empty shelves for years, with prices that are unaffordable for most of the population and a growing reliance on informal supply networks. Agricultural production has steadily declined, and the lack of foreign currency restricts imports of basic food items, a direct consequence of 67 years of communist dictatorship.
This situation, combined with political repression and economic collapse, has triggered the largest exodus in Cuban history. According to the report on Cuban emigration in 2025, more than one million people emigrated between 2021 and 2025. In 2025 alone, around 35,200 Cubans arrived in Spain, a country that has established itself as the second main destination for the Cuban diaspora after the United States, with a resident community of approximately 287,490 people.
In January 2026, the Spanish government approved an extraordinary regularization for between 500,000 and 840,000 undocumented migrants, a measure that opens a window of opportunity for many Cubans who arrived in the country without documentation, such as could be the case for Yanela, whose arrival this weekend coincides precisely with this new migratory scenario.
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