Cuba libre: why Cubans have reached breaking point

There is an astonishing patience in the Cuban people, born of endless waiting. When a store has, say, chicken, people queue, often for days. But on Monday, outside the Zanja police station in central Havana, people weren’t waiting for food. They were waiting — patiently — for news of family members who had been arrested during unprecedented protests at the weekend.

The demonstrations flared like a petrol fire. Cubans had settled down for lunch, many preparing to watch the Euro 2020 final, when news spread of a march in the town of San Antonio de los Baños on the outskirts of Havana. Videos on social media showed people, driven to fury by daily, hours-long power cuts, chanting ‘libertad’ — freedom — or else ‘Patria y Vida’ — fatherland and life (a play on the bellicose revolutionary slogan Patria o Muerte — fatherland or death).

By half-time at Wembley, 4 p.m. here, the game was interrupted — as all Cuban television was — to show the furious President, Miguel Díaz-Canel, calling on government supporters — ‘all the revolutionaries, all the communists’ — to take to the streets and protect the country against protestors who had by then emerged the length and breadth of the 1,250km island.

By international standards, the protests were mild.