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The Electric Union (UNE) reported this Sunday that at 6:30 in the morning, the National Electroenergy System (SEN) was interconnected throughout the entire Cuban territory, two days after the fourth total blackout of the year.
According to the official post on Facebook, at the time of the announcement, units 3 and 4 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes thermoelectric plant in Cienfuegos, and unit 1 of the Lidio Ramón Pérez (Felton) CTE in Holguín were online.
The reconnection process had progressed in stages throughout the early morning.
At 00:13 hours, the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas was synchronized with the national grid.
Hours earlier, block 1 of Felton and block 6 of Diez de Octubre in Nuevitas (Camagüey) had been incorporated, and the system was already connected “from the province of Pinar del Río to Holguín,” as reported by UNE itself.
However, interconnection does not equate to stable supply nor does it resolve the underlying crisis.
The collapse occurred on Friday, July 10 at 3:55 PM, when a fault in the 220 kV transmission line between Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus triggered a cascading disconnection that left nearly 10 million people without electricity in just 35 minutes.
At that moment, the system was operating under extremely precarious conditions: only 935 MW available against a demand of 3,100 MW, with 11 thermal units out of service and 106 distributed generation plants halted due to a lack of fuel.
The recovery was particularly arduous. During the early hours of Saturday, the 11th, there was a new power failure in the western microsystem, forcing the protocol to be restarted from scratch.
Félix Estrada Rodríguez, director of the National Cargo Office, acknowledged that the recovery was progressing "with the limitations we have regarding fuel" and that it was necessary to create provincial "islands" to ensure hospitals and water pumping.
This was the eighth total blackout of the National Electric System in approximately 24 months and the fourth so far in 2026, occurring just four days after the third collapse on July 6.
The structural context is devastating.
On July 8, the largest energy deficit in the history of Cuba was recorded: 2,341 MW, affecting 73% of the population simultaneously.
The thermoelectric plants are between 40 and 60 years old without comprehensive capital maintenance, and Cuba has gone more than three months without receiving regular oil shipments.
Experts estimate that modernizing the electrical infrastructure would require between 8,000 and 10,000 million dollars, an unattainable figure for the regime.
The government's response was limited to rhetoric.
The Minister of Energy and Mines declared "no one gives up here" without announcing any structural measures, while Díaz-Canel blamed the "genocidal oil embargo" and called to "better organize" the blackouts.
Citizen indignation was expressed strongly.
On Saturday, the 11th, in Guanabacoa, a strong pot-banging protest with chants of "Freedom!" and "Down with the dictatorship!" was recorded after more than 33 consecutive hours without electricity, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the protests on July 11, 2021.
In June 2026, 107 street protests were recorded in Cuba, a historic record, nearly double the previous high.
On social media, Cubans questioned the fragility of the system: "And in those 35 minutes, isn't there an action plan in the SEN that prevents such a failure in the 220 kV line between the two cities from becoming a larger issue?" wrote a user.
Another summed up the collective frustration: "We can't live like this for an entire life; there are children, young people, and the elderly here. Something has to change to improve this because, frankly, we are at extreme levels where it's impossible to live."
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