A video published this Saturday on Facebook by Roilán Rodríguez Barbán, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, rivaled in incoherence and absurdity with the statements made by Miguel Díaz-Canel regarding "utopia and the horizon".
After a day of "volunteer work" and mobilization in the Vedado neighborhood, the leader delivered an impassioned speech to an audience of barely a dozen people, megaphone in hand and in a grandiloquent tone, proclaiming that "Nothing is impossible!".
It seems that the Licensed in Marxism-Leninism and History felt inspired after the garbage collection and quoted Antonio Machado to motivate the attendees. However, the video did not capture the exact phrase or verse of the Andalusian poet, born in Palacio de las Dueñas, which most likely —amidst mountains of trash— was the one that says “walker, there is no path.”
However, next, the Master's in Economic and Political Culture from the Communist Party school "Ñico López" was snatched away and carried off by the muses in their speech, and they invoked "a great man from Spain named Manuel Alejandro," of whom they also quoted a fragment.
"I always引用 a text from a great figure of Spain named Manuel Alejandro, where he says that nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible because true men, from the heart... the heart's revolutionaries always know that nothing is impossible," said Rodríguez Barbán, emphasizing the redundancy and tautology.
And he concluded: "Nothing is impossible as long as we write. Nothing is as far away as we imagine. Everything that is on Earth can be reached: a love, a dream. Everything we see, everything that exists. And here in Plaza, nothing is impossible and everything can be!"
Manuel Álvarez-Beigbeder Pérez, known as Manuel Alejandro, is actually a Spanish composer, arranger, and music producer, author of more than 700 songs for Raphael, Rocío Jurado, José José, and Luis Miguel, among others. Despite his numerous accolades, he does not hold the highest rank of nobility in Spain, known as "Grande de España."
«Nothing is Impossible» is a song by the Spanish singer Miguel Ángel with lyrics, indeed, by Manuel Alejandro. The track was originally released in 1974 as the B-side of his single One Too Many Drinks.
Apparently, with a presumed extra drink, Rodríguez Barbán intended to ground in reality and in the realm of the feasible the philosophical emptiness that Díaz-Canel unleashed in late July by quoting Lenin (instead of Eduardo Galeano or Fernando Birri) during an interview with RT.
«The utopia is on the horizon. When we take two steps forward, the utopia takes two steps back. And the horizon moves ten steps ahead. What is the purpose of utopia? To walk. I would say that hope is the same». The phrase was immediately decoded as an acknowledgment that there is no concrete solution to the crisis faced by the Cuban population.
The phrase unleashed a wave of mockery, memes, and criticism that the regime was unable to contain.
Figures such as the comedian Ulises Toirac and the actor Luis Alberto García responded with sarcasm, and many Cubans interpreted the metaphor as a veiled admission that the government lacks concrete solutions to the crisis.
The regime attempted to stop the mockery but failed, and the episode became a symbol of the vast divide between the leadership of the PCC and the reality that Cubans experience.
If the first secretary of the PCC stumbled upon the horizon and the elusive utopia, his subordinate and lieutenant in Plaza sought to eliminate the ruler's principle of uncertainty with a lyrical proclamation that everything is within reach, even dreams. Not in the horizon, but here and now, Cubans can conquer utopias and pick up the trash that the socialist state leaves uncollected from the streets... which, according to official doctrine, belong to the revolutionaries.
This is not the first time that Rodríguez Barbán has caught attention on social media. In May, he was at the center of another controversy after posting a photo in front of the tomb of the dictator Fidel Castro with a message against Donald Trump, which also sparked reactions on social media.
As Cuba faces an unprecedented energy, food, and migration crisis in 2026, the response of the Communist Party remains the same as always: poorly attended events, grandiloquent rhetoric, and mediocrity among its incompetent leaders.
Filed under: