The provincial broadcaster of Las Tunas, Radio Victoria, has gone more than 35 days without normal transmission since it went off the air on August 24 due to issues with solar panels and a fuel shortage, as publicly reported by Gretel Yanet Tamayo Velázquez, a journalist and head of the sports team at the station.
The energy crisis reduced continuous 24-hour transmissions to just five or six hours a day, and none of the efforts made so far have yielded concrete results.
The timing couldn't be worse: on October 4th, the 65th National Baseball Series kicks off, and the Leñadores de Las Tunas will debut against the Tigres de Ciego de Ávila. Without a stable signal, the province will be left without radio coverage of the country's main sporting event.
"On October 4, the season begins, and the Leñadores de Las Tunas will face the Tigres de Ciego de Ávila, but the radio broadcast is in real danger," warned Tamayo Velázquez on his social media.
The journalist noted that the solution to the problem is not due to a lack of willingness on the part of the workers. "The radio producers are willing, but there is a lack of institutional support and a definitive response," she stated.
"Today, the radio is silent. And that silence strikes right at the heart of Cuban baseball," wrote Tamayo Velázquez, summarizing what thousands of fans in Tunas feel just days before the start of the baseball season.
Meanwhile, fans are expressing their displeasure on social media: “Radio Victoria is off-air,” they write with concern.
The situation of Radio Victoria is not an isolated case but rather a consequence of the severe energy crisis that has silenced stations across Cuba in 2026. Radio Angulo in Holguín went off the air in January due to prolonged outages and the deterioration of its generators, and Santiago de Cuba lost radio and television in May due to a generation deficit.
Already in September of last year, in the province of Las Tunas itself, the station Radio Cabaniguán, from Jobabo, had reduced its broadcast to six hours a day due to a lack of fuel for the generator.
Las Tunas has eight solar parks with 64.8 MW installed, but the average generation barely covers about 2.5 hours of daily electricity supply, according to data from the local Electric Company. The province also had 311 pending complaints regarding electrical issues by the end of August and had recorded 11 transformer thefts so far this year.
Since June, RadioCuba Las Tunas had already reconfigured its programming to prioritize only the informative system and events of high interest, due to the inability to maintain normal broadcasts.
Radio Victoria celebrated its 73rd anniversary on September 20, amid a crisis, with the slogan: "Always with you," which has become a difficult promise to fulfill.
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