Paolo Titolo, an Italian photojournalist and husband of Mariela Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro, acquired three properties in tourist areas of Barcelona between 2015 and 2019, while the Cuban people were facing one of the worst economic and social crises in their history, according to an exclusive investigation by El Confidencial published this Friday.
The first purchase was an apartment over 155 square meters in the Eixample neighborhood, bought in March 2015, with its current market value estimated between 950,000 and 1,250,000 euros, according to the Idealista portal, which places the price per square meter in that area above 6,600 euros.
Two years later, Titolo acquired a 32-square-meter apartment in Barceloneta, valued between 160,000 and 210,000 euros, and in 2019, he completed the trio with another apartment of the same size on Viladomat Street, in a building associated with tourist rentals, with an estimated price of between 180,000 and 220,000 euros.
The combined value of the three properties could exceed one and a half million euros, a fortune inaccessible to any ordinary Cuban citizen in a country where blackouts can last up to twenty hours a day and food and medicine are scarce.
The operations were carried out precisely during the mayoralty of Ada Colau, who had made the fight against tourist rentals the main focus of her municipal management, adding a layer of political irony to the case.
Title is not just a simple spouse of the Castro family: for almost two decades he was the general director in Cuba of the business group Amorim, owned by Américo Ferreira de Amorim, the richest man in Portugal and a personal friend of Fidel and Raúl Castro since the 1960s. According to a businessman quoted by El Confidencial, "the businessman provided the funds, sending six or seven million euros, and he decided how to invest it."
That appointment was not coincidental. In 2006, during Raúl Castro's tour of Portugal, the then leader of the regime asked Ferreira to hand over the group's representation to someone he trusted, and thus Titolo replaced the veteran executive José Guimaraes to take over the position.
In Barcelona, the dictator's son-in-law reached out to business leaders and elite economic circles, offering his political connections as a bargaining chip to facilitate investments in Havana. "There was a reason he was the boss's son-in-law," the investigation notes. Among his failed attempts was representing Nissan in Cuba, which did not succeed because a Mexican billionaire held back the contract.
The newspaper Las Américas ranks Titolo among the richest men on the island. His sons are involved in hydrocarbon import businesses, and his daughter Lisa Titolo Castro manages the Mipyme Gaia Mercado in El Vedado, which is dedicated to meat importation and food sales.
The real estate business network also involves Vilma Rodríguez Castro, sister of "El Cangrejo" and granddaughter of Raúl Castro. CiberCuba documented in 2019 that she rented out a luxury mansion in Miramar, Havana, under the name "Casa Vida Luxury Holidays," for up to 650 dollars a night.
The property, featuring four bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, and a jacuzzi, could generate between $6,000 and $10,000 monthly. Following U.S. sanctions against the Castro family, the profile of the property changed the host's name from "Vilma" to "Anabel" and the declared residence from Panama to Spain; subsequently, in 2020, the mansion was listed by the United States among the prohibited accommodations in Cuba for its citizens.
The case fits into a broader pattern of enrichment among the Castro elite. Sandro Castro, grandson of Fidel, owns bars in Havana. Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as "El Cangrejo" and grandson of Raúl Castro, was linked by The New York Times to a human trafficking network in Mexico, although without formal charges.
The Trump administration has intensified pressure on this elite: in June 2026, it sanctioned Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro's family circle, and in September imposed new sanctions on the former dictator's circle, including his grandson Fidel Ernesto Castro Calis and the Banco Exterior de Cuba.
A source familiar with the Cuban business framework summarizes it unequivocally: «Paolo is the classic representative of the new wealthy class in Cuba. The latest package of 147 laws approved to open the Cuban market is merely a strategy to legitimize the elite, made up of children and relatives of military personnel who control the large corporations on the island.».
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