The Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant, the largest capacity plant in Cuba, went offline from the National Electric Power System (SEN) early Sunday morning, worsening an electrical crisis that was already operating at its limits during the commemoration of the 73rd anniversary of the assault on Moncada.
La Unión Eléctrica (UNE) reported on Facebook that at 1:07 am, unit 1 of the Matanzas plant went out of service “due to a leak in the economizer,” the same failure that has caused most of its outages throughout the year.
The coincidence with the national holiday did not go unnoticed on social media. "This is how the regime celebrates the defeat of Moncada," wrote activist Magdiel Jorge Castro on X.
This Sunday's breakdown is not an isolated incident. Since the beginning of summer, the "Guiteras" has been part of a series of outages that reflects the structural deterioration of the plant.
On July 17, the plant was only synchronized with the SEN for a mere 26 minutes before it shut down again due to a leak in the boiler, and on July 21, it went offline again due to water loss in the same component.
By early July, the plant had accumulated at least 17 unplanned outages so far in 2026, with 293 hours of downtime recorded just between January and the end of May due to defects in the economizer.
The underlying problem is technical neglect: the "Guiteras" has not received major maintenance since 2010. Partial repairs—welding, pipe replacement, hydraulic tests—have not resolved the structural failure. Technicians indicate that a definitive solution would require maintenance for at least 180 days, something the authorities have postponed indefinitely.
The national electrical context in which this new outage occurs is extremely serious. The SEN collapsed on July 10 in what was the fourth total blackout of the year, just two days after on July 8, the largest energy deficit in the country's history was recorded: 2,341 MW.
For the 23rd and 24th, the UNE reported a projected demand of 3,200 MW against an availability of only 1,070 MW, with maximum shortfalls of 2,315 MW. Outages in Havana ranged from 15 to 24 hours daily, while some provinces recorded interruptions of up to 87 consecutive hours.
This Sunday, while the regime celebrated the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks with a central event in Pinar del Río led by Miguel Díaz-Canel, millions of Cubans faced another day without electricity, with the country's most powerful plant offline again due to a breakdown in the same component that has been without a definitive solution for months.
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