A crowd of residents gathered this Friday at the intersection of Escobar and San Miguel streets, in Centro Habana, amid a new day of protests against the blackouts that are shaking the Cuban capital.
A video posted on Facebook by Glenda Rancano shows dozens of people gathered in the street with visible black smoke in the background, in what appears to be the burning of garbage containers or barricades.
The post, accompanied by four fire emojis, was shared with the text "Escobar and San Miguel Centro Habana !!" and accumulated over 3,800 views in a short time.
The images depict a narrow street lined with colonial buildings featuring deteriorated facades, crowded with adults and children who are either watching or moving through the smoke. The scene is repeated at various locations in the capital: this Friday, pots and pans protests, barricades, and shouts against the government were also reported in Playa, El Vedado, and Santos Suárez.
One of the most symbolic moments of the day occurred in the Bahía neighborhood, where residents sang the National Anthem in the street during a protest against power outages.
The trigger for the protests is the energy crisis that Cuba is experiencing. On Wednesday the 17th, the Electric Union (UNE) warned that the blackout could affect 69% of the country between 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM, with an availability of only 950 MW against a demand of 3,000 MW.
The day before, on Thursday the 18th, the UNE reported 970 MW available at six in the morning, with 1,650 MW already affected and a projection of 2,075 MW out of service during peak hours.
The breakdown at the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant, which occurred on June 15, further intensified a system that operates with chronic deficits close to 2,000 MW daily.
Centro Habana has been experiencing weeks of rising tension. On June 17, a mass protest took place at Manrique and Reina, just six blocks from the Capitol.
On June 8, there was a night of banging pots and pans and fires on the streets at Infanta and San Lázaro, accompanied by a heavy police presence.
And on June 3rd, residents of San Lázaro managed to push back the police during a nighttime protest after more than twenty hours without electricity.
The Escobar and San Miguel area has its own history: in February 2026, a fire was reported in that same stretch, and San Miguel Street has been the scene of complaints about the accumulation of garbage that clutters the public way.
The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts recorded 1,245 protests in March, 1,133 in April, and 1,311 in May 2026, making this wave one of the most intense since July 11, 2021.
The organization Cubalex has documented at least 14 arrests in Havana related to protests over blackouts since March 6.
The regime has not provided solutions to the underlying crisis and has responded with police deployments, while the blackouts in Cuba continue to worsen with no resolution in sight.
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