Slogans such as "Down with the PCC," "Freedom for the people," and "Killer Canel" appeared painted in the Plaza de los Chinos, near the Vladimir Ilich Lenin General University Hospital, the main hospital center in the province.
The activist Ariel Góngora shared images and a video on Facebook this Monday, attributing the graffiti to the clandestine group Comandos Libres de Holguín (CLH). “The CLH are back with graffiti now at the Plaza de los Chinos near Lenin Hospital in Holguín. We continue, we're aiming for more,” wrote Góngora, whose post garnered over 6,000 views in less than 24 hours.
The new graffiti appears just a week after similar slogans emerged in Santa Clara. On September 15, messages reading "Down with Canel" and "Down with Canel and the PCC" were found on the façade of the University Theater of the Central University "Marta Abreu" of Las Villas, Díaz-Canel's alma mater.
The authorities responded by covering the messages with Cuban flags and deploying agents from the Technical Investigation Department alongside canine units in the area.
The context in Holguín is one of an acute crisis on multiple fronts. The provincial Electric Company acknowledged in June a capacity of just 70 MW against a demand of 240 MW, less than 30% of what is necessary, with blackouts exceeding 50 continuous hours in some circuits.
This electrical crisis is compounded by a lack of drinking water. In September, more than 229,000 people in the city were facing supply cycles lasting more than seven days, and the Lenin Hospital itself—one of the locations where the graffiti appeared—still had no regular access to the service.
Cuba has experienced at least eight total blackouts of the national electrical system so far in 2026, a figure that highlights the collapse of energy infrastructure after decades of disinvestment.
Clandestine graffiti has become a recurring form of protest throughout the island. The Cuban Conflict Observatory recorded in June 2026 a record of 41 antigovernment graffiti in a single month, the highest number since it began tracking them in September 2020. In February of that same year, it had counted 42, another monthly high, within a total of 1,185 spontaneous protests or grievances.
Holguín has its own history of this type of dissident expression. In August 2022, posters reading "Down with the Dictatorship" appeared on Loma de la Cruz, and in June 2025, more than twenty graffiti covered the wall of the Mayabe cemetery with phrases such as "Homeland and Life" and "Freedom for the People."
The Instagram account "Guapo y Fajao," which has documented several of these actions, summed up the situation with a phrase that circulated after the graffiti in Santa Clara: "The regime can cover a phrase with flags and repaint a wall, but it cannot hide the growing discontent within Cuba."
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