The Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM) announced this Saturday on its official X account that the National Electric System (SEN) was "connected from Pinar del Río to Nuevitas," in a statement that sparked disbelief among dozens of Cubans who had been without electricity for over 24 hours following the eighth blackout of the year.
The official message detailed that they were already producing the combined cycle of Boca Jaruco "stably", five units with accompanying gas, two units from the Mariel thermoelectric power plant (CTE), and two from the Santa Cruz CTE, while the two units of the Céspedes CTE were "in the process of starting up."
The reaction on Facebook was immediate and strong. "In his imagination," wrote a user.
Another one directly questioned the geography of the ad: "Nuevitas doesn't belong to Camagüey, right? Because I don't know where that current is." A third person was more blunt: "Where is that? Because since the SEN went down yesterday, I haven't seen any light."
A commentator also denounced the inequality in distribution within the capital itself: "Come here and the lighting in the underground of Old Havana is a mess, they don't even let you breathe, and the underground of Centro Habana is untouchable, there the lights can't be turned off. Can you give me any explanation about that? Because it's every day. Enough with the shamelessness."
The collapse that prompted the announcement began on Friday, September 18, at 1:52 PM, when the successive failure of two high-voltage lines of 220 kV —Matanzas-Cienfuegos and Matanzas-Santa Clara— exacerbated by unstable weather conditions, left more than nine million people across the island without electricity.
The restoration progressed slowly and unevenly: on Saturday morning, Havana barely had 3% of its customers with service — about 30,277 out of 862,732 — and hours later the percentage rose to 44.2%, although only six of the 18 main water pumping systems were operational.
The situation became even more complicated when the CTE Antonio Guiteras experienced boiler failures due to the mechanical stresses from the collapse.
The general director of the Yumurino block, Román Pérez Castañeda, described the damage as "punctures in several spots of the steam generator." Cooling down the boiler requires nearly 72 hours, so the repair crews will not be able to intervene until Monday afternoon.
This is the eighth total disconnection of the SEN in 2026, in the context of a structural crisis that Minister Vicente de la O Levy himself acknowledged in May when he admitted that Cuba had no reserves of fuel oil or diesel for electricity generation.
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