Reports released on Monday night by the independent platform "NiO Reportando Un Crimen" describe a tense situation in the Estrada Palma area of Santa Clara, Villa Clara, where residents allegedly took to the streets and blocked several roads, prompting a deployment of police forces.
According to the information received from the profile, «neighbors have taken to the streets and closed several roads» while «several streets remain blocked» and the presence of people continues at certain points in the area known as El Condado, a neighborhood and popular council located in the southern outskirts of the city.
The platform specified that, at the time of publication, it had not been able to determine what caused the concentration, whether there were any arrests, or the exact scale of the police operation. This editorial team has not been able to confirm the information independently.
The images accompanying the reports show nighttime scenes with fire on the roadway—possibly barricades—and groups of people gathered on the sidewalks of what appears to be that area of the city.
Neighbors' comments on the post point to prolonged power outages as the main trigger. "I live on the next block, and those people have been without electricity for about a week due to 'supposedly' a malfunction that hasn’t been resolved. And the worst part is that this is already the second time in less than 15 days," wrote a resident whose identity the platform committed to keeping confidential for safety reasons.
Another neighbor broadened the perspective: "In El Condado, there hasn't been power during the day for 5 months, no business can progress, it's not easy." A third commentator described the issue as a constant "turning on and off" that "destroys all the equipment," which is acknowledged, according to him, by the electric company itself.
There were discrepancies among the commentators themselves: some claimed that the circuit had been without supply for seven days, while another pointed out that he had received power at dawn and in the afternoon of that same day, although he acknowledged that a specific outage in some block could explain the difference.
The incident occurs in the context of a worsening electric crisis in the country. On September 18, the eighth total disconnection of the National Electric System of the year took place, attributed to a successive failure in the Matanzas-Cienfuegos and Matanzas-Santa Clara lines, with a gradual restoration just days before the reported events in Estrada Palma.
Santa Clara and its neighborhood El Condado have a recent history of protests due to power outages. In June, residents of that same area staged banging pots and pans in protest over power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, and activist Andy García Lorenzo was detained at the end of August after sharing images of those mobilizations.
Nationally, 2026 has seen the highest number of protests since July 11, 2021. According to data from the Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC), July set a historical record with 1,415 documented protests, complaints, and critical expressions.
"NiO Reporting a Crime" indicated that it will continue to gather information and that those in the area can privately contact the platform, assuring that it will not release data that could endanger its sources.
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