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The veteran journalist and political analyst Paul Taylor, a regular contributor to The Guardian and a member of the Centre for European Policy, publishes this Friday a opinion piece analyzing why Cuba has lost the support of its traditional allies, including those in Europe, in light of the maximum pressure policy of the Trump administration.
Taylor is part of a generational reflection: for many leftist Europeans of the seventies, Cuba was seen as a progressive cause, a small country that resisted U.S. imperialism. Today, that romantic image clashes with the reality of an island facing an energy collapse, with massive blackouts lasting for hours, hospitals without generators, and factories shut down.
The columnist points out that Havana's historical allies are either absent or paralyzed. Russia, caught in a war it cannot win in Ukraine, only sent a single shipment of oil in March, which Washington allowed through for "humanitarian" reasons.
No other country has sent fuel due to fear of U.S. secondary sanctions.
Venezuela, which for years supported Cuba with subsidized oil, was sidelined following the U.S. military intervention in January 2026, which resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Mexico and Brazil, governed by the left, issued a joint statement with Spain in April condemning "the serious situation" of the Cuban people, but without explicitly mentioning the U.S. or the oil embargo, and committing only to increasing humanitarian aid, not energy supply.
China has not challenged the blockade either. According to Taylor, Xi Jinping has more important issues to address with Trump, and there are no indications that Cuba was even on the agenda of the summit between the two leaders held this month.
The formal accusation against Raúl Castro —aged 94— for the downing of the planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, declassified on May 20, illustrates to Taylor Washington's determination to eliminate the old Cuban guard.
Regarding Europe, the analysis is devastating. Spain and France, historically the main defenders of Cuba within the European Union, remain silent. Madrid opposed Trump's war against Iran and denied the use of its military bases for that operation, but it has said nothing about the energy blockade on its former colony.
The European fracture was evident in the : Hungary voted against the resolution calling for an end to the embargo, and six other Eastern European countries —Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania— abstained, citing Cuba's support for Russia in Ukraine.
Taylor collects the testimony of Herman Portocarero, former Belgian and EU ambassador in Havana, who negotiated the EU-Cuba cooperation agreement in 2016. "Cuba today has nothing free," he stated. "It is a tropical island with a lot of fertile land that for years has imported 80% of its food." Portocarero described the failed attempts to transform Cuban agriculture: "We tried, and the Brazilians tried as well, but we failed. Each time we encountered a wall of ideology, of dogma."
Taylor himself acknowledges that the Cuban crisis is largely the result of decades of communist mismanagement that stifled economic initiative and freedom of expression, rather than the U.S. embargo in place since 1962.
His conclusion is definitive: "Europeans also have bigger fish to fry with Trump. They may have a history with Cuba, but the U.S. has geography and geopolitics on its side."
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