Díaz-Canel: Meliá and Iberostar are leaving Cuba "against their will."

The Cuban ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel stated in an interview with the Spanish media elDiario.es that the hotel chains Meliá and Iberostar are leaving Cuba "against their will," attributing their departure solely to the pressures resulting from the secondary sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on May 1st.

The interview, granted on June 4 in Havana, takes place in the context of the deadline set by Washington for foreign companies to sever their ties with GAESA, the military conglomerate of the Cuban regime that controls tourism through its subsidiary Gaviota. This deadline expired this Friday, leaving the island without its main foreign hotel operators.

"They are departing against their will. Just as they have been able to develop their businesses in Cuba, they have also brought learning for the Cuban parties involved in tourism," declared Díaz-Canel, who acknowledged the historical significance of both chains and anticipated that "there will be hotels that we will have to operate more today with Cuban management than with shared management with foreign entities."

Meliá Hotels International, the largest foreign operator on the island with around 33 hotels and 14,000 rooms, announced the immediate suspension of operations in 15 properties after incurring losses of four million euros in 2024 and an average occupancy rate of 34.1% in the first quarter of 2026. Iberostar confirmed the exit of 12 of its 18 hotels linked to Gaviota/GAESA, including the Selection La Habana, the tallest hotel building in Cuba, inaugurated in March 2025 with an investment of 200 million dollars.

The wave of departures was not limited to Spanish chains. The Canadian Blue Diamond Resorts withdrew 62 hotels and over 12,900 rooms effective May 30, and Archipelago International pulled its six hotels under the Aston brand in Havana, Varadero, Cayo Coco, and Holguín.

Díaz-Canel framed these withdrawals within what he described as a deliberate strategy by Washington: "What they aim for is to create suffocation to induce a rupture within Cuban society, to provoke a social explosion, to provide a pretext for intervention."

The Cuban leader also demanded a response from Madrid and Brussels regarding the situation: "The EU and Spain must protect their businesses and citizens. They cannot allow extraterritorial laws to be imposed on them by another country."

Executive Order 14404, signed by Trump on May 1, introduced secondary sanctions applicable to companies from any country in the world that maintained ties with GAESA. On June 4, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) tightened the grip by formally blocking the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and adding Díaz-Canel himself, along with his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza, his stepson Manuel Anido Cuesta, Alejandro Castro Espín, and Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis to the list of specially designated nationals.

Díaz-Canel also described a critical humanitarian situation on the island: a surgical waiting list of over 100,000 patients, including more than 12,000 children, and 67% of the basic medicine supply unavailable for the population, all exacerbated by widespread blackouts caused by a fuel shortage.

The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated that "the ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to foster a positive change in the behavior" of the Cuban regime.