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Martiño Ramos Soto, former music teacher and former member of the Galician leftist party En Marea, spent 150 days locked up in a Cuban prison that police sources describe as "a hole of terror" before being extradited to Spain.
Martiño must serve a sentence of 13 and a half years for continuously sexually assaulting a minor student. According to the report from El Español, the conditions in the Cuban prison broke his resolve so quickly that he actively begged for his transfer to Spain.
The Cuban prison had "constant humidity, food shortages, structural dirtiness, conditions far removed from the Spanish standard." The detainee requested the island's authorities to be extradited to Spain as soon as possible, as he could no longer endure the situation in the penitentiary facility on the island.
Ramos Soto fled Galicia on September 15, 2025, when he was supposed to be located to be notified of his imprisonment. Before disappearing, he sold his apartment on Doctor Temes Fernández street in Ourense and his vehicle to a municipal scrapyard to raise cash.
He traveled via Portugal, Brazil, and Peru before settling in Havana, in the El Vedado neighborhood, using the alias "Martín Soto" and presenting himself as a documentary photographer.
He chose Cuba precisely because of the absence of a current extradition treaty with Spain, a gamble that ended in failure after his extradition due to diplomatic cooperation between the two countries.
His whereabouts were made public in November 2025. Hours later, the Cuban Revolutionary Police arrested him on November 21, in compliance with the extradition request issued by the Provincial Court of Ourense. He was on the list of the ten most wanted fugitives by the Spanish National Police.
From that moment on, his ordeal in prison began. The police sources describe the facility where he was held as having "constant dampness and food shortages," aspects that closely match the accounts provided by well-known political prisoners on the island. This is a reality that prisoners and their families systematically report in Cuban prisons.
International organizations such as Prisoners Defenders, Cubalex, and Human Rights Watch repeatedly document overcrowding, extreme malnutrition, contaminated water, pest infestations, andforced labor in Cuban prisons, where at least 60,000 inmates produce tobacco and charcoal for export without receiving any wages.
These conditions explain the shift in Ramos Soto. According to police sources, his attitude changed rapidly: from the initial attempt to maintain the facade of his false identity, he moved to a growing resignation, ultimately accepting extradition voluntarily and pleading for his transfer.
Last Wednesday, he boarded in Havana handcuffed and escorted by agents on an Iberia flight. He landed in Madrid-Barajas on Thursday and was taken directly to the courts at Plaza de Castilla, where Court of Instruction number 44 issued a custody order. He is now detained at Soto del Real in Madrid, as a preliminary step before his final destination.
The Provincial Court of Ourense convicted him in July 2024 for continuously sexually assaulting a student from the time she was 12 years old until she was 16, over the course of seven school years.
The sentence also included 21 and a half years of disqualification from professions involving minors and a compensation of 30,000 euros to the victim, who during the entire time her aggressor was at large was struggling with severe repercussions: self-harm, psychiatric admissions, and attempts at taking her own life.
Penitentiary institutions must now decide where he will serve his sentence permanently. The natural reference would be the prison in Pereiro de Aguiar, in the province of Ourense, from where the sentence originates, although sources from the penitentiary sector indicate that it is not the most likely option.
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