A Cuban residing in Spain published a three-minute video yesterday on TikTok that emotionally captures the feelings of Cuban emigrants settling in the peninsula: the moment when the +53 becomes +34 and, with it, an entire identity begins to transform.
The video, published by user @yoanly.figueredo under the title "A True Story of What Every Cuban Experiences When Emigrating to Spain," immediately resonated with thousands of fellow countrymen who recognized their own migration experiences in his words. In just a few minutes, the creator condenses stages that many take years to process: the initial euphoria, the culture shock, the loneliness, and finally, the reconstruction of a new identity.
The phenomenon is significant. According to recent data, in 2025, over 35,200 Cubans arrived to the peninsula, a figure that adds to a sustained trend in recent years. The National Institute of Statistics of Spain estimates the resident Cuban community at approximately 287,490 people, making it one of the largest Latin American communities in the country.
The migratory flow to Spain has not stopped. Previous data already indicated that between 2023 and the first three quarters of 2024, 53,100 Cubans had arrived in Spanish territory, a figure that reflects the magnitude of the exodus and the preference for Spain as a destination.
What Yoanly Figueredo's video captures with special sensitivity is what experts refer to as the loneliness of limbo, the deepest pain of migration: that stage in which the emigrant no longer fully belongs to the place they left, but also does not feel completely part of the new one.
Specialized psychologists in migration describe this process as a multiple and invisible grief in which not only the country is lost, but also family, friends, one's native language —even if the same language is spoken—, scents, flavors, and even the way of relating to others.
Over time, however, many Cubans manage to integrate without completely losing their essence. There are customs that give them away as Cubans even after years of living in Spain: the volume of their voice, the expressive gestures, the way they address strangers, or their insistence on certain culinary rituals that no distance can erase.
The video by @yoanly.figueredo accumulated thousands of comments within just a few hours, many of them from Cubans who wrote phrases like "this is me" or "you made me cry." In the context of massive migration, this type of content serves a purpose that goes beyond entertainment: it names what hurts and, by naming it, makes it a little more bearable.
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