A man sits on the Malecón seawall after sunset during a blackout in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Cubans were gradually getting power back on July 15, after the third nationwide power outage in less than 10 days, the national electricity company said.
The communist island was already struggling to keep the lights on before U.S. President Donald Trump cut off its oil supplies in January, depleting the dwindling supply of fuel for its power plants.
The national power grid went offline at about 11:05 a.m. on July 14, according to the state-run UNE electricity company, leaving the country’s 9.6 million inhabitants without power.
UNE said a problem with a generating unit at a thermoelectric plant caused a “sudden frequency change,” resulting in the blackout.
It was the third complete blackout on the Caribbean island since early July and the fifth since the start of 2026.
“I have no words,” Maria Caridad Alvarez, a 62-year-old housewife, told AFP. “When I woke up this morning, the power was back and I cooked some beans. Now, I went out and it’s off again. It feels like there is no solution.”
The energy crisis “is killing people’s enthusiasm for life,” she said.
In both of last week’s blackouts, it took more than 24 hours to restore power across the island of 9.6 million people, a process made slower and more complex by fuel shortages.
Power outages in the capital Havana totalled more than 30 hours at a time, while in the outlying provinces, it was several days before electricity was restored.
