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The Teatro José Jacinto Milanés in Pinar del Río, the most important in the province and one of the oldest in Latin America, has gone nine years without significant maintenance. But now, suddenly, there is urgency: the Cuban regime mobilized a hundred workers to restore it in just three weeks, right in time for the political gala on July 26.
The state agency ACN reported this Saturday that the work began on June 30 and is expected to conclude on July 20, so that the venue is ready by the 25th to host the celebration for the 73rd anniversary of the assaults on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks. Pinar del Río was designated as the venue for the National Central Act by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba on June 27, under the campaign "My Moncada is the homeland," in the year marking the centennial of Fidel Castro's birth.
The accumulated deterioration over nearly a decade was severe. María del Carmen Lazo Cala, president of the Provincial Council of the Performing Arts, acknowledged to ACN that "the floor of the auditorium was in very poor condition, and the seats in the loge were sinking." Additionally, there were roofs damaged by humidity, deteriorated wood paneling on all three levels of the theater, and the bust in the lobby destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022, which is still awaiting repair.
Ariel Martínez, an artist from the ABCArt group involved in the work, described the magnitude of the task: "We renovated the ceiling, as once parts start to fall, the moldings, which are made of plaster, are also lost." He added that "we restored the mirror, one of the most complicated tasks." All of this was accomplished in twenty days.
The pattern is not new. In 2024, the regime repaired the Zaza Hotel in Sancti Spíritus just before July 26, and in 2025 restored three attractions at Parque Lenin with similar urgency. What changes in 2026 is the scale of the contrast with the reality surrounding the theater.
While a hundred people work around the clock to make the Milanés look impeccable for the cameras, Pinar del Río has over 40,000 families without housing, some of whom have been waiting for three decades. Hurricane Ian caused more than 108,000 damages to the housing stock in the province in September 2022, and by the end of April 2026, only 63% of those damages had been addressed, with a mere 5% improvement compared to the previous year.
The very first secretary of the provincial PCC, Yamilé Ramos Cordero, admitted in June that "there are families who have gone 30 years without a home, generation after generation." Bakeries in several municipalities in Pinar del Río only had flour for five days. And the province is suffering from blackouts lasting between 20 and 40 hours daily, in an island where the electrical system has experienced at least seven complete failures in the last 18 months.
The reaction on social media was overwhelming. Following Díaz-Canel's announcement about the venue for July 26, a user summarized the sentiment of many: "Cuba is not celebrating; you are killing the country." Another user, in response to a father who posted a photo of his daughter sleeping on the tile floor due to the heat from the blackouts, wrote: "Do you know what homeland is? Homeland is your daughter, mine, everyone's. Because of this and for them, down with everything."
The Milanese Theater, whose history dates back to 1838 and which has hosted figures such as Bola de Nieves, Rita Montaner, and Rosita Fornés, deserves to be restored. What does not deserve any applause is the nine years of political will that were lacking to do so, and that funding and workforce only appeared when the publicity calendar demanded it.
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