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The Astral sailboat of the NGO Open Arms set sail this Sunday from the port of Barcelona heading to Havana, loaded with photovoltaic equipment destined for the Juan Manuel Márquez Pediatric Hospital, as part of a mission named "Heading to Cuba" that also carries medications and food.
The initiative is led by Open Arms and the Ecooo Solar Revolution Cooperative, with the explicit support of more than 20 social and political organizations, including Podemos, Izquierda Unida, Compromís, Comuns, Bildu, and Ecologistas en Acción. None of these organizations has publicly mentioned that Cuba has 1,250 political prisoners —a historic record according to Prisoners Defenders in March 2026— including 31 minors detained.
The director of Open Arms, Óscar Camps, justified the mission as a gesture of reciprocity towards the Cuban medical brigades, which he described as "professionals who are part of a sustained tradition of international solidarity, present in challenging environments and with a continuity that does not depend on media attention."
Camps added that "the time has come to respond" and to "give back a part of that solidarity where we can contribute," without mentioning the political repression being experienced on the island or the demonstrators from July 11 who are still imprisoned.
The ship will make stops in Valencia on May 13, in Málaga on the 19th, in Cádiz on the 22nd, and in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the 28th, before crossing the Atlantic. At each stop, figures from the cultural world, public representatives, and influencers will board to "raise awareness" about the cause. The mission will cover approximately a month of sailing.
The fundraising campaign had raised 63,609 euros of a target of 100,000 —64%— with 1,031 donors as of May 4th.
The flotilla "Rumbo a Cuba" is not an isolated event. In March, the vessel "Nuestra América" —nicknamed "Granma 2.0"— arrived at the port of Havana from Mexico with 14 tons of humanitarian aid and 73 solar panels, with the participation of Pablo Iglesias. Díaz-Canel celebrated this arrival on social media while the country was suffering power outages of up to 20 hours a day.
Iglesias downplayed the Cuban crisis from a luxury hotel in Havana, which sparked protests from the Cuban exiles in front of the Podemos headquarters in Madrid. Cuban exiles protested in front of Podemos on March 31 by reading sentences of political prisoners from July 11 and accusing the Podemos leader of minimizing the political crisis.
The electrical collapse that these fleets aim to alleviate has structural roots in decades of mismanagement by the regime, not in the U.S. embargo: 76% of electricity generation depends on imported oil derivatives, nine out of the 16 thermal power units were out of service in March 2026, and restoring the system would require between 8 billion and 10 billion dollars.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights documented 366 repressive actions in just April 2026, and the regime's Easter amnesty explicitly excluded political prisoners, opponents, and participants in the 11J protests. Camps, on the other hand, only stated that he hopes to "personally deliver all the photovoltaic material to ensure that, at a minimum, the intensive care unit of the hospital can attend to newborns and the vulnerable population that requires health assistance."
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