The content creator Dunia Ferragut returned to Cuba after seven years away and what impacted her the most was not the reunion with her family, but the state of filth she found in her own home: as soon as she arrived, still wearing her travel clothes, she claims she immediately started cleaning.
"What a mess! I can't explain it to you. Honestly, and with nothing left unsaid, what impressed me the most at my age was the mess that was in my house. I was speechless," he recounted in one of his Facebook videos.
Ferragut returned to Cuba because his two daughters, aged 12 and 19, live there. Before publishing his impressions, he waited three months to, as he explained, conduct a more thoughtful analysis and not be swayed by the initial shock: "You can't understand that something is good; everything will always be wrong."
In his first reaction, he acknowledged that he "started telling everyone that they are pigs, that they are disgusting, how can they live like this." However, after spending weeks living in the upper part of Jesús María, in Old Havana, his perspective radically changed.
"There is no possible human way for the houses in Old Havana, in the high area of Jesús María, to be clean. Because the water doesn’t come in here, sweetheart. The water comes in once a month, once every 20 days," he explained in a third video.
Far from blaming his family, Ferragut ended up defending them: "Cuban mothers and Cuban women are the cleanest in the whole world, and I don't intend to dispute that with anyone. But if they don't have water, they can't clean."
In October 2026, the vice president of the Water and Sanitation Business Group of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources acknowledged that only 32% of the population supplied by networks received the service, either partially or fully.
The lack of water is compounded by a chronic shortage of cleaning products. The Cuban government itself acknowledged in 2021 a deficit in liquid detergent production of 75.5%: 1,000 tons were produced monthly compared to a need of 4,078.
In Havana, the distribution has been limited to one liter of detergent per household every three months. When basic hygiene products appear in the informal market, their prices are inaccessible for most workers.
The comments on Ferragut's video reflected a division of opinions. Some users criticized her for publicly exposing her family: "I also saw everything messy, but I would never be able to make my family feel bad because they do everything possible to make us feel good," wrote a follower.
Another was more direct: "Because you forgot very quickly that this mess has been there forever." A third added: "In some houses I've seen dirt, in others I haven't. I noticed it before leaving Cuba as well."
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