Most Cubans were still without power yesterday, a day after the latest widespread electric outage to hit the cash-strapped Caribbean country.It was the first widespread blackout of 2025 and the fourth outage over the past six months on this island of 9.7mn inhabitants.Cuba has been suffering through an economic crisis marked by widespread food and fuel shortages, and it struggles with an ageing electric system.The authorities said yesterday that parallel circuits were helping provide power to priority sectors like hospitals, and some neighbourhoods.“Several provinces have parallel circuits and generator units are starting to be synchronised” with the national grid, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X.The outage started on Friday evening in a suburban Havana substation, ultimately bringing down the national system, the energy ministry said.The streets of Havana were plunged into darkness, forcing people to navigate by phone and flashlight.Much of the Cuban capital faces near-daily power cuts of four or five hours – outages that can last 20 hours or more in the provinces.In February, the authorities suspended all activity on the island for two days to avoid a widespread blackout.Two outages in late 2024 lasted days, one of them during a hurricane.Abel Bonne chatted with friends on Havana’s Malecon waterfront boulevard early yesterday, taking in the fresh sea breeze after a stuffy night without power.“Right now, no one knows when the power will come back on,” he said. “This is the first time this had happened this year, but last year it happened three times.”The country’s eight thermal power plants, nearly all dating to the 1980s or 1990s, experience regular failures.The government is now rushing to install at least 55 solar parks this year – enough, it says, to supply 12% of national demand.Severe shortages of food, medicine and water have made life increasingly unbearable for many Cubans, and people have been fleeing the island in recent years in record-breaking numbers.Cuba blames its economic woes on a Cold War-era US trade embargo, a web of laws and regulations that complicate financial transactions and the acquisition of essentials like fuel and spare parts.
