Cuba and the United States: the expulsion of the Cuban diplomat that reopens the clash between Waltz and Rodríguez at the UN

IN 30 SECONDS

• What has happened? The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltzexhibited 27 pieces of evidence of the Castro family’s properties before the General Assembly on Tuesday; Washington has expelled the Cuban diplomat who, according to his version, attacked a US official.
• Who is behind? Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the delegation of Havana headed by the Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
• What impact does it have? The vote on the annual resolution against the embargo, scheduled for this Wednesday, and the risk for Spanish hotels in Cuba if the application of Title III of the Helms-Burton law is tightened.

Cuba and the United States return to the open clash at the UN: Washington expels the Cuban diplomat accused of attacking an official.

A map, some Rolexes and a beaten table at the General Assembly

The scene occurred on Tuesday the 27th in the General Assembly chamber. The ambassador Mike Waltz He took the stand to reject the annual resolution that the United Nations has approved since 1992 calling for the end of the US embargo on the island, and instead of staying in the trade debate he opened the Castro family closet. He showed Fidel Castro’s Rolexes, the Varadero estate and the map of Cayo Piedrathe clan’s private island with a floating restaurant, pool and a lagoon for pet dolphins.

The Cuban representatives banged on the table and asked to speak by procedure. The Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguezcalled the ambassador a liar and several officials approached the stand shouting. Waltz didn’t budge: ‘Do you understand who you’re dealing with? This is America! Back off,’ he responded before reminding him that he is not going to intimidate him in the United States like he intimidates political prisoners in Cuba.

The version of Washington He maintains that one of those officials attacked a member of the American delegation, and that is why the State Department has ordered his departure from the country. Havana denies the aggression and assures that his diplomats only protested because of what he considers a provocation. Waltz’s spokesman, JP Freire, told Daily Mail that a Cuban representative tried to take away the phone with which he was recording the incident and that the same official had already used ‘the same intimidation’ with the auxiliaries to cut off the ambassador’s microphone on a previous occasion.

Minutes after the altercation, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio He published on social networks the photo of the map of Cayo Piedra that Waltz had projected in the room. It was not an isolated gesture: days before, Cuban diplomats harassed dissidents and former political prisoners who were attending New York to an event organized by Waltz himself, including Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance.

Washington has stopped treating the UN as a neutral forum: it has turned it into a showcase where it displays the accounting of its adversaries.

The General Assembly is expected to vote this Wednesday, October 28, on the 2026 edition of that resolution. The text is approved every year with an overwhelming majoritywith the United States and Israel against and with Spain and the rest of the European partners in the group of those who support the end of the embargo.

What is at stake in Spain: hotels in Cuba and Title III of the Helms-Burton law

Spain is the first European investor in the island and tourism is its main gateway. Strings like MeliaIberostar, Barceló and NH manage a relevant part of the Cuban hotel industry under the permanent threat of Title III of the Helms-Burton law, the 1996 article that allows US citizens to sue companies that benefit from properties nationalized after 1959 before US courts. The full activation of this article in 2019 opened files against Spanish groups and Brussels responded with the blocking regulation that declares the sentences issued under that law inapplicable in the EU.

With this precedent on the table, Tuesday’s fight adds a variable: if Washington converts the public exposure of the regime into sustained policy, extraterritorial pressure may grow, and with it the legal costs, insurance, management contracts and bank financing of Spanish operations on the island. Santander and BBVA They maintain limited exposures, but any tightening forces them to review the country risk. Added to this is tourism: Cuba receives tens of thousands of Spanish visitors every year and the airlines that cover the route operate with tight margins.

At the diplomatic level, the Spanish Government maintains the traditional position: vote in favor of the resolution against the embargo, defense of a negotiated solution and rejection of the extraterritorial application of US law. Madrid does not share the diagnosis that the embargo explains the humanitarian crisisbut neither has he turned that discrepancy into a bilateral conflict with the White House.

Washington Logic

What has changed is not the embargo, but the scenario where the battle is fought. For three decades, the resolution of the General Assembly was a predictable procedure: Havana won the vote and Washington lost the narrative. Waltz’s operation reverses the terms. Instead of defending the legality of the embargo, the ambassador displayed the Castro family heritage—the 14,000-square-meter Nave Pilar in Varadero, the six-room compound with cedar imported from the Amazon, the Cayo Piedra resort—and moved the debate from the economic terrain to that of the moral legitimacy of the regime.

The coalition that supports this strategy is easy to identify: the Cuban-American electorate of South Florida, decisive in the presidential and local elections of Miami-Dadeand a republican diplomacy with Marco Rubio at the head of the State Department. The historical precedent accompanies. Bill Clinton signed the Helms-Burton law in 1996 after the downing of two Hermanos al Rescate planes, and Ronald Reagan He had launched Radio Martí in 1985 with the same logic of information warfare. Obama tried the opposite path between 2014 and 2016 and the turn was undone with Trump. The reading that prevails in Washington is that the thaw benefited the regime economically without opening political space.

For Spain, the consequence is uncomfortable but manageable: The Spanish differential in Cuba is tourism, not tradeand the chains have learned to operate with legal structures in third countries. The real risk appears if the White House links the application of Title III to Wednesday’s vote or to a broader negotiation with Havana.

The immediate calendar includes this Wednesday’s vote and the response of the Cuban delegation, which has already made it clear that it does not plan to leave the room. No one in Washington expects the resolution to change the embargo; The goal is that, each year, the General Assembly photo shows something different. What we observe is a diplomacy that has stopped playing defensively in multilateral forums and that uses the rules to expose the adversary’s contrasts. The question is how much of this method survives the next rotation at the UN and whether Brussels reads it as a threat to its companies or as another episode of the Cuban struggle.

Case File

• The case: Waltz exposes the Castro family’s assets to the General Assembly during the debate on the annual resolution against the embargo; The Cuban delegation reacts with screams and Washington orders the departure of a diplomat to whom it attributes aggression.
• Key data: Incident on Tuesday, October 27; voting on the 2026 resolution scheduled for Wednesday the 28th; Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, fully activated in 2019, allows lawsuits in US courts for property nationalized after 1959.
• For Spain: Meliá, Iberostar, Barceló and NH have the greatest exposure, and any extraterritorial tightening makes insurance, financing and management contracts on the island more expensive.