Residents of the neighborhood Bahía, in Havana, sang the Cuban National Anthem in the street on Thursday afternoon, in an act of defiance captured on video and shared on social media as one of the most symbolic moments of the current wave of protests in Cuba.
The scene evokes July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets in the largest wave of popular protests in decades, carrying flags and singing the anthem as a symbol of patriotic appropriation against the regime. For the government, the anthem in the mouths of the protesters represents a primary symbolic threat: it implies that the citizens are claiming the nation for themselves, stripping the party of its monopoly over national symbols.
The singing in Bahía was not an isolated event. On the same Thursday, reports emerged of pot-banging, barricades, burning garbage, and cries against the government in Centro Habana, Playa, El Vedado, and Santos Suárez, where the streets burned as protests spread throughout the capital.
In Santiago de Cuba, pans banging could be heard just a few blocks from the PCC headquarters, in neighborhoods like Sueño, Santa Bárbara, Antonio Maceo, and Altamira, amidst a backdrop of blackouts that last up to 22 hours daily in that province.
Everything happened on the same day that the regime was celebrating in Havana the approval of a package of 176 economic measures in an extraordinary session of the National Assembly, presented as a major reform to "rescue the economy and socialism."
The contradiction became evident: millions of Cubans were unable to watch the parliamentary broadcast due to blackouts that already exceeded 48 consecutive hours across the country.
"No estamos renouncing socialism," declared Miguel Díaz-Canel after the announcement of the measures, while in the streets of Bahía, his compatriots sang the anthem of a nation that the regime claims to represent but that the population contests loudly.
The approved package includes changes that have been historically vetoed by Cuban socialism: private banking, private currency exchange, greater openness to foreign investment, and the possibility for state-owned enterprises to transform into joint-stock companies. The process was expedited: Díaz-Canel announced the measures on June 12, the Central Committee of the PCC endorsed them on June 17, and the Assembly approved them on June 18.
The protests on Thursday are part of a sustained escalation. The Cuban Conflict Observatory recorded 1,311 protests in May 2026, a figure close to the record of 1,333 from December 2025, reflecting a 42% increase in direct challenges to the State compared to April.
The main trigger remains the electricity crisis: a deficit exceeding 2,000 MW and the breakdown of the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant on June 15 —its 15th failure of the year— have left Cuba in a near-permanent darkness that no parliamentary reform can eliminate overnight.
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