Havana families once again took to the streets on Tuesday night amid a blackout that in some provinces exceeds 72 consecutive hours, defying police repression with pots and pans, the National Anthem, and shouts of "Freedom!" and "Down with the dictatorship!" in a new night of protests against the regime.
The trigger was the seventh total collapse of the National Electric System in 18 months —the third so far in 2026— triggered on Monday when the shutdown of Unit No. 6 at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey left the country with only between 935 and 1,000 megawatts available against a demand of 3,100 MW, creating a deficit of over 2,200 MW.
Protests were reported in Guanabacoa, Jaimanitas, Centro Habana, Arroyo Arenas, and Alamar, where residents of zones 9 and 11 of the neighborhood held a pot-banging event and burned trash in the street around 10:00 PM to block the way.
In La Hata, Guanabacoa, residents of shelters and military-use buildings staged another pot-banging protest in an area where inequality is glaringly obvious: the military blocks have tiles, gardens, and lighting, while the relocated families have cracked cement floors.
When the police arrived to disperse the protesters, they responded by banging their pots even harder as a sign of defiance.
From the videos shared on social media, a voice can be heard shouting: "There is no fear here! There is no fear here! There is no fear here, gentlemen!"
Another voice cries out: "Down with the dictatorship, down with the communist regime, down with everything, we need freedom, freedom, they are killing us."
Repression was also evident: arrests and police operations were reported, with targeted internet outages in neighborhoods of the capital, a pattern that the regime has applied systematically since the wave of protests began to escalate.
This mobilization is part of the longest streak of demonstrations since July 11, 2021. According to the Cuban Conflict Observatory, in June 2026, there were 107 street protests in Cuba —a historic record, nearly doubling the previous high of 54 in March— with 82 of them concentrated in Havana.
Cubalex documented at least 38 arrests related to the protests of June, including six minors, while rapper Matos MC K-LIBRE was transferred to Valle Grande prison and the UN Committee against Enforced Disappearances granted the regime until July 14 to submit a report on his case.
Days before these protests, Miguel Díaz-Canel stirred outrage by stating in an interview with the Puerto Rican weekly CLARIDAD: "Ring the saucepan of the neighbors to the north, as they are the ones who have us in this blackout."
The response of the Cubans was to take to the streets with even greater force. In the same text, the leader admitted: "There is a shortage of transportation, food, and medicine here; there are prolonged power outages lasting more than twenty hours. This causes dissatisfaction; no one can be happy; the people are suffering."
However, the popular outrage in response to Díaz-Canel's words made it clear that the pots are not sounding towards Washington, but towards Havana.
On July 6, the United States Embassy in Havana issued its seventh security alert of the year due to the energy crisis, advising its citizens to prepare for prolonged outages, as blackouts have reached 87 consecutive hours in Matanzas, 72 in Granma, and up to 35 hours daily in the capital.
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