Embajada de Cuba en Reino Unido

14/10/2026

13/10/2026

🇨🇺🏅 Happy 59th birthday to Javier Sotomayor!

Born in Limonar, Matanzas, the Cuban Olympic champion soared to 2.45m in Salamanca in 1993, setting a high jump world record that remains unbeaten 33 years later.

A remarkable legacy in Cuban and world sport!

13/10/2026

🌸🇨🇺 90 years of Cuba’s national flower: La Mariposa!

On 13 October 1936, the mariposa (Hedychium coronarium), known in English as the white ginger lily, was chosen as Cuba’s national flower, becoming an enduring symbol of our nation's history, identity and aspirations.

With its delicate, butterfly-shaped petals and unmistakable fragrance, the mariposa represents far more than natural beauty. Its pure white colour evokes peace, unity and the ideals of freedom and independence that have shaped Cuba’s history.

A flower with a remarkable story: According to Cuban tradition, during the 19th-century struggles for independence, patriotic women concealed secret messages for the Liberation Army among these fragrant blossoms, which they wore in their hair and shawls. What appeared to be a simple flower could thus carry a message of courage, solidarity and hope.

Originally from Asia, the mariposa flourished in Cuba’s tropical landscape and became deeply rooted in the country’s cultural traditions, from gardens and wedding bouquets to poetry and popular memory.

Ninety years after its designation, this elegant white flower continues to embody the spirit of Cuba: a nation whose beauty is inseparable from its history, resilience and love of freedom.

🌸 A flower of peace. A symbol of independence. A part of Cuba's soul. 🇨🇺

13/10/2026

We are delighted to share that an introduction facilitated by CRICKET CIC has succeeded in initiating research engagement between University College London (UCL) researchers and Cuban partners!

As we reported last summer, we accompanied Professor Mitchell Valdes, Director of CNEURO in Cuba, on a visit to Dr Fiona Jeganathan and Professor Fiona Ducotterd of the UCL Alzheimer’s Drug Development Institute (UDDI).

Their discussions laid the foundations for the successful bid for a small grant from UCL Global Engagement Fund. This will enable one or two Cuban dementia research specialists to visit UCL, fostering knowledge exchange, collaboration and new opportunities for joint research.

At CRICKET, we are proud to help build partnerships between researchers and institutions in Cuba and the UK. Congratulations to everyone involved, and we look forward to seeing this collaboration grow!

13/10/2026

🇨🇺🎹 Concert For Cuba

📅 Sunday, 8 November
🕓 4PM
📍 Room 142 Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths University

Cuba solidarity concert.

Room 142 Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths University.

The performance is free, but we encourage everyone to donate generously at the event. There are no tickets, but please bring friends, family, and your wallet 🙂

The concert will raise money for solar panels and batteries in Cuba, which are desperately needed because of the current blockade.

It will be led by Cuban concert pianist Eralys Fernandez and friends, performing Piazzolla’s Four Seasons, Libertango, and Oblivion (all by the same composer), as well as Cuban solo piano pieces.

There will also be contributions from the Cornelius Cardew Trust and community musician Emily Blyth.

The event will last approximately 90 minutes.

¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

13/10/2026

🏥🇨🇺 A power cut during cancer surgery?

Jeremy Corbyn MP recounts a Havana doctor’s fears over electricity shortages and fuel for hospital generators.

Patients must never pay the price of the blockade.

12/10/2026

🕯️ 6 October 1976 – 6 October 2026
50 years. 73 lives. Still no justice.

“A bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.”

That is the chilling message an FBI informant says was telephoned to Orlando Bosch by the man who had planted the bomb, after Cubana Flight 455 plunged into the sea.

On 6 October 1976, a bomb of plastic explosives hidden in a tube of Colgate toothpaste destroyed a civilian Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados. Everyone on board was killed, men, women and children, including the entire Cuban national fencing team, returning home with gold medals.

The very next day, FBI intelligence was already pointing to the masterminds: Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime CIA asset, and Orlando Bosch. Before the attack, intelligence sources had even overheard Posada saying they were going to hit a Cuban plane.

What came next was a mockery of justice:

▪️ In 1990, President George H.W. Bush granted Bosch permanent residency in the United States, ignoring his own Attorney General, who had called Bosch a terrorist. Bosch died a free man in Miami in 2011.

▪️ Posada, a paid CIA agent for years by the CIA’s own admission, bribed his way out of a Venezuelan prison in 1985 and joined Oliver North’s covert Contra operation. In the 1990s he orchestrated bombings of Havana hotels that killed an Italian businessman and wounded others (“I sleep like a baby,” he told The New York Times). In 2000 he was arrested in Panama for plotting to assassinate Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro with a 200-pound bomb. Convicted, then pardoned in 2004, he entered the United States illegally in 2005 and lived openly in Miami. Washington never charged him with terrorism, only with perjury and immigration fraud, and a jury cleared him after three hours. He died a free man in 2018.

Fifty years on, the National Security Archive of George Washington University has published ten of the most revealing declassified US intelligence records on the bombing. In the words of Peter Kornbluh, who directs its Cuba project, they provide “the only possible verdict — the verdict of history.”

Kornbluh also notes that, while the current US administration seeks to justify regime-change operations by accusing Cuba of terrorism, these documents show that for decades Cuba has been the target of terrorism by violent individuals long associated with the United States.

Cuba remembers its 73. We will never forget, and we will never stop demanding justice.

🇨🇺

10/10/2026

🌍🤝🇨🇺 Cuba: building bridges across languages, cultures and continents!

On 10 October, representatives of the Cuban Embassy in the United Kingdom joined representatives from 🇦🇴 Angola and 🇹🇱 Timor-Leste for the 15th edition of Amigo Month, celebrating the cultural heritage, diversity and contributions of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking communities across the UK.

🌎 From Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa, Europe and Asia, our peoples are connected by shared histories, cultural traditions and enduring bonds of friendship and solidarity.

🇨🇺 Cuba is proud to help strengthen these bridges, bringing communities together through culture, cooperation and mutual respect.

✨ Different languages, shared histories, one spirit of friendship!

10/10/2026

🇨🇺 10 October 1868: The beginning of Cuba’s wars of independence

158 years ago today, at La Demajagua, a sugar estate near Manzanillo in eastern Cuba, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes rose against Spanish colonial rule and proclaimed Cuba’s right to independence.

🔔 In a defining act, Céspedes freed the people he held in slavery on his estate and invited them to join the struggle. That historic morning marked the beginning of the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878) and a new chapter in the history of our nation.

⚔️ In the years that followed, the mambises transformed the machete, a familiar agricultural tool, into a powerful symbol of resistance. Under leaders such as Máximo Gómez, Ignacio Agramonte and Antonio Maceo, Cubans fought with extraordinary determination against Spanish colonial rule.

The road to independence was long and costly. Black and white Cubans, formerly enslaved and free, women and men, contributed to a national struggle in which the aspirations for freedom, equality and sovereignty became inseparable.

🇨🇺 158 years later, the defence of Cuba’s sovereignty and political independence remains as vital as ever. In the face of the intensified US blockade and renewed external pressures, the principle proclaimed at La Demajagua endures: Cuba’s future belongs to the Cuban people, free from foreign interference and coercion.

🕊️ Today, we honour Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the generations who fought and sacrificed for our independence. Their legacy reminds us that sovereignty must not only be remembered, but defended.

From London, the Embassy of Cuba in the United Kingdom joins Cubans at home and abroad in commemorating this defining date in our national history.

🇨🇺 10 October 1868–2026. Our independence. Our sovereignty. Our future.

09/10/2026