Spain: Tourists and wealthy Cubans gather at the Meliá Cohiba

Madrid/There were quite a few people in the cafeteria and the lobby from the Meliá Cohiba hotel, located a few meters from the Malecón, in El Vedado, this Thursday. On an island that has become accustomed to the absence of tourists, it was not unusual to see a good handful of people sitting drinking coffee or chatting in the armchairs at the entrance of the luxurious establishment.

“The weekend gets pretty crowded. day out in the pool,” comments a worker. The prices are scandalous for the pocket of an ordinary Cuban: from 30 dollars for its mere use to 200 for a ticket for six people with drinks and meals. In pesos, 14,000 or 100,000, with a strange exchange rate of 480 CUP that is quite far from the official one, at 527 per dollar.

The mirage is brief. The Sevilla hotel, located in another privileged central area of ​​the capital, a few meters from the Capitol, is completely empty. “No foreigner: not even in the lobby“Not in the cafeteria, not anywhere,” says a waiter. The crisis is ending even one of the hotels that in december He still boasted that he had almost everything. Here, a day at the pool is still affordable, at 8,000 pesos per person, which is why you can see – through the fence – some Cubans hanging out. The cappuccino, at 450 pesos, is also cheaper than at Cohiba, and you pay in cash, because there is no connection.

The two hotels, which were heads and tails this Wednesday, when Cuba’s partial withdrawal of the company that manages them was announced, remain. For now. Spanish hotel companies have sought an intermediate strategy in the face of the threat of sanctions from the United States, whose Treasury Department will be able to apply fines from tomorrow to foreign companies that have links with the military conglomerate Gaesa. The two with the most presence, the Balearic hotels Meliá and Iberostar, have left the establishments in which they had contracts with Gaviota, the hotel branch of Gaesa –15 in the first case and six in the second–, and remain in the remaining ones, owned by Cubanacán or Gran Caribe. That leaves Meliá with 19 hotels and Iberostar with six.

The Minister of Economy of the Spanish Government, Carlos Body, was in the Caribbean this Wednesday, for an official visit focused on strengthening business relations with Mexico. There he made reference to the matter, hours after the Balearic government – ​​of a different political nature – expressed itself in the same sense and this Thursday the Consell de Mallorca (government body of the island, of PP and Vox) did so, whose Minister of Tourism asked the central Executive for help. “In times of uncertainty, it is important for companies to know that they have the support of the institutions, and he has defended that they can carry out their activity with legal certainty, stability and the maximum guarantees for their investments,” said Guillem Ginard.

Minister Corps spoke about this during an appearance in Mexico City: “We closely monitor the decisions of the US Administration on Cuba to minimize their impact on Spanish companies,” he said.

Body stated that the Spanish Government maintains a “permanent dialogue” with its companies to “help and accompany them at this time” and added that this support is carried out through the Economic and Commercial Office of Spain and the Secretary of State for Commerce, which acts “as a bridge” even with the US authorities.

Spanish investments in Cuba are important, but in recent years they have fallen considerably. This June, the report of the aforementioned Economic and Commercial Office in Havana It registered 70 investment operations from that country, in addition to 70 hotel management contracts. In total, since 1993, Spanish companies have a stock of 465 million euros in Cuba.

However, from 2018 to 2025, the drop is enormous. In these eight years, only 3.4 million were invested (0.7% of the total), of which the vast majority correspond to 2020 –3 million–, just 442,230 euros in 2024 and only 9,990 euros in 2023. Furthermore, in five years of that period not a single euro was invested.

Of the total, the highest amount corresponds to hotel services, with 34%, and is followed by tobacco, with 29%. Altadis, the Spanish tobacco company merged with a French one and now integrated into the British group Imperial Tobacco, is the largest investor alone, since in 2000 it bought 50% of Habanos SA for 439 million dollars. According to published information this Thursday in the newspaper The Countrythe revenues for 2024 alone – $827 million – double that investment.

Regarding exports from Spain to the Island, in 2024 they reached 870 million dollars, although the data – from the last published report – is very outdated, especially taking into account the abysmal deterioration in recent months. For the European country, it is not a big client (number 51 in the world and eighth in Latin America). “Exporting companies are mostly SMEs. More than 280 are established in the country through delegations and more than 60 through investment projects,” the document says.

And to this are added the debts and defaultsboth with the State and with hundreds of companies, which have even founded the Platform for Those Affected by Non-Payments of the Cuban Government, whose amount they place at close to 320 million euros.

Spanish hotel companies remain strongly linked to the regime through contracts with Cubanacán and Gran Caribe and, while there is speculation whether there will be even more sanctions that affect these interests, analyzes are multiplying that indicate that the United States is looking for a piece of the pie of Cuban tourism.

Much further away, from Jakarta, the Indonesian hotel company Archipielago International spoke this Thursday, who announced his departure on Monday from Cuba, where it was present with the Aston chain.

The group’s communications director, Sari Purbaningrum, told the EFE agency that “the global situation is uncertain for now” and his company is waiting “to see what happens” before deciding on a possible return to the Island.

This Thursday, the main travel platforms no longer allowed rooms to be reserved in any of the six hotels that the company operated on the Island, including Grand Aston Cayo Las Brujas, Aston Panorama Hotel or Aston Costa Verde Beach Resort.