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The Hispanic-Cuban boxer Enmanuel Reyes Pla, bronze medalist at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, fiercely criticized former Spanish Vice President Pablo Iglesias on Tuesday during the show "Código 10" on the television channel Cuatro, describing the politician's visit to Cuba as a sham as part of the international flotilla "Nuestra América Convoy."
Iglesias traveled to Havana with about 630 leftist activists from 33 countries who brought food, medicine, and solar panels. The delegation was received by the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The communist leader recorded a video from a Grand Suite at the Gran Hotel Bristol Habana Vieja Meliá Collection, a five-star establishment with views of the Capitol, where the room costs over 200 euros per night, completely inaccessible to any Cuban.
From that luxurious suite, Iglesias downplayed the Cuban crisis stating that the situation "is certainly difficult, but not as it is being portrayed from the outside," highlighting alleged advancements such as solar panels and electric motorcycles.
Reyes Pla, who became a Spanish citizen in 2020, was straightforward in "Código 10": "He filmed a video from a five-star hotel, and if he had stuck the camera out the window behind him, he would see the darkness of Havana; the people on the street are walking like zombies."
Regarding the fleet as a whole, he declared: "It is the greatest theater that can exist on the face of the earth right now."
The boxer, who emigrated from Cuba clandestinely to reach Spain in 2017, also questioned the motivation of the former leader of Podemos.
"I believe he does it to look good; he likes that revolutionary side. But it's very easy to do it from Spain, a capitalist country. No Cuban living there can do what he does, speaking freely like that," he emphasized.
The Gran Hotel Bristol Habana Vieja Meliá was the only hotel with continuous electricity during the general blackout last Saturday, something that Pablo Iglesias did not mention in his statements.
One day prior, Reyes Pla had already criticized Iglesias on Instagram with a message filled with personal emotion: "Cuban blood runs through my veins, and it saddens me to see how a beautiful country continues to be destroyed… by a communism that, after 67 years, its only achievement is to plunge it into misery".
And he concluded his post by throwing down a challenge: "If you really want communism, then stay there… just like the Cuban people, in the same conditions, let's see if your discourse remains the same."
Cuba is experiencing its worst crisis in 2026 since the Special Period in the 1990s, with a projected GDP contraction of 7.2% according to The Economist Intelligence Unit, and a cumulative decline of 23% since 2019.
Reyes Pla, who , summarized his position with the authority of someone who has lived it firsthand: "I come from there; I know what it is like to live in communism… you have no idea what it’s like to see people around you die, fighting their entire lives and ending up with nothing."
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