The Electric Union (UNE) announced this Saturday on its official Facebook account that the National Electroenergetic System (SEN) had been "connected throughout the country", without clarifying that the reconnection of the transmission system does not equate to the restoration of electricity service in homes.
The announcement came a day after the eighth total blackout of the SEN in 2026, which occurred on Friday, September 18, in the afternoon, when the successive failure of two 220 kV transmission lines —Matanzas-Cienfuegos and Matanzas-Santa Clara— left millions of people across the island without electricity.
The response from Cubans on social media was immediate and forceful: dozens of comments from residents in multiple provinces debunked the official optimism with irony and frustration.
"What country? Because where I live, there has been no electricity since yesterday afternoon," wrote an internet user in the UNE's post, summarizing the widespread sentiment.
Other users were equally direct: "I just found out that I don't live in Cuba," noted one person, while another summarized the contradiction in three words: "Connected, but without power."
Complaints came from Guantánamo, Las Tunas, Ciego de Ávila, Pinar del Río, Matanzas, Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus, Granma, Artemisa, and Havana, with some citizens enduring more than 34 hours or even days without electricity.
"Which country will it be in? In another one, because ours is the land of fantasy," summarized another internet user, in a phrase that encapsulated the chasm between the official statement and the reality experienced by millions of Cubans.
The situation in the capital was telling: the recovery in Havana barely reached 44.2% on the morning of this Saturday, with 126 out of 286 distribution circuits active and very few of the main water pumping systems operational.
The situation worsened due to a new failure at the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant, the largest in the country, located in Matanzas: the collapse of the SEN caused damage to the economizer of its boiler, with "punches at several points in the steam generator", as described by the director of the Yumurino block, Román Pérez Castañeda.
The cooling of the boiler takes nearly 72 hours, so the repair crews would not be able to intervene until the afternoon of Monday, September 21.
La Guiteras has accumulated at least 17 unscheduled interruptions so far in 2026, making it one of the most fragile links in a structurally deteriorating electrical system.
Instead of taking responsibility for that deterioration, the UNE described the work of its workers as carried out "amid a genocidal siege that prevents the arrival of spare parts, technology, and fuels," shifting the blame to the U.S. embargo.
However, the crisis primarily stems from decades of poor management and neglect of the infrastructure: the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, admitted in May 2026 that Cuba had “absolutely no fuel, no diesel” for electric generation.
The last few months have recorded peak generation deficits exceeding 2,000 MW on multiple days, against a demand of around 3,100 MW, a gap that no Facebook announcement can close.
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