The U.S. State Department pointed out this Monday the K Tower, the 42-story hotel skyscraper that GAESA built in Havana, as a symbol of the chasm between the enrichment of the Cuban regime and the living conditions of the people.
In a message posted on X by the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the State Department described the building as «a permanent reminder to the Cuban people that the illegitimate regime only cares about enriching itself, not about improving their living conditions».
The publication comes as part of a sustained campaign of pressure on GAESA, the business conglomerate controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and emphasizes that the K Tower was “built for elites and foreign visitors” and remains closed while ordinary Cubans face precarious living conditions.
The building, located at the corner of 23 and K in El Vedado, is the tallest in Cuba, standing at approximately 154 meters. It was fully funded by Almest, a real estate subsidiary of GAESA, in what the regime presented as a "100% Cuban investment."
The agency EFE estimated the cost at 200 million dollars, although journalistic estimates raise that figure to 565 million. On social media, Cubans have been asking if that amount would have been enough to build a power plant of about 300 MW, a capacity sufficient to alleviate the electricity crisis that is currently paralyzing the island.
The comparison is particularly striking in the current context: analysts have estimated that just 43 million dollars annually would be sufficient to supply 63 essential medications in Cuba, and around 250 million would be needed to stabilize the national electricity grid.
On August 3, Cuba experienced its sixth complete disconnection of the National Electric System this year, with generation deficits nearing 2,315 MW and outages lasting up to 24 hours daily.
The hotel, which officially opened at the beginning of 2025 with rates starting at 147 euros per night, closed its doors in March 2026 citing "the situation in the country." Shortly thereafter, in June, Iberostar —the Spanish chain that managed the establishment— confirmed its departure from 12 of its 18 hotels in Cuba, including Torre K, citing the impact of sanctions on GAESA.
The collapse of Cuban tourism is widespread. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz acknowledged before the National Assembly, at the end of July, that 73% of the country's hotel facilities were closed and that around 25,000 workers in the sector were in a state of availability.
Blue Diamond Resorts closed 62 hotels and more than 12,900 rooms in May, and Meliá announced in July the closure of its 34 establishments on the island, marking the end of 36 years of operations.
The message this Monday is not an isolated incident. On August 7, the State Department had already warned foreign companies operating with GAESA that they are becoming "accomplices of the dictatorship's corruption scheme," and days earlier had pointed out that the military conglomerate has $18 billion in reserves while the Cuban people lack electricity, food, and medicine.
Meanwhile, as revealed by The New York Times, the CIA established a special group to track the opaque financial flows of the Cuban elite both inside and outside the island.
The K Tower, built with hundreds of millions from the public treasury, inaugurated in 2025 and closed just months later, thus becomes, in the words of the State Department itself, the most visible reminder of the regime's priorities.
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