Spanish hotel chain ceases operations in Cuba under pressure from Washington
The Spanish hotel group Meliá is to cease all operations in Cuba by the end of the week, citing "major difficulties" in doing business on the island amid intensifying pressure from Washington. In a statement to the Spanish stock market regulator, the company said new US sanctions had made it "impossible, de facto and de jure, to maintain even minimal operational stability", and it would try to ensure a smooth transition to limit the impact on staff, suppliers and clients. The move marks a significant retreat for one of Cuba's largest foreign investors and reflects the growing effectiveness of US measures in isolating the island's tourism sector.
Meliá, which has around 14,000 rooms across 34 hotels in Cuba, had already announced last month that it would stop running 15 of those properties, and has now extended this to cover its remaining sites, including 19 operated jointly with Cuba's tourism ministry. The withdrawal follows sanctions ordered by US President Donald Trump in May targeting individuals linked to Cuba and threatening foreign firms and banks that deal with them, part of a wider campaign against the island's military-run conglomerate GAESA. Meliá was the first Spanish hotel chain to enter Cuba in the 1990s, and its exit comes on top of a longstanding US economic embargo since 1962 and a near-total block on oil shipments to Cuba since January.
- Meliá to end all Cuba hotel operations by week's end
- Cites new US sanctions making operations "impossible"
- Chain ran 34 hotels, 14,000 rooms, on the island
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of the tighter US sanctions regime argue that hotels and resorts on the island are frequently tied to entities controlled by the Cuban military and security apparatus, and that channelling tourist revenue to the government props up a system responsible for well-documented human rights abuses and the suppression of political dissent. They see measures that make it commercially unviable for foreign firms like Meliá to operate there as a legitimate and overdue use of economic leverage, arguing that genuine solidarity with the Cuban people means starving the regime of hard currency rather than allowing business as usual to continue indefinitely. From this perspective, the closures are a difficult but necessary short-term cost in pursuit of long-term political change on the island.
The case against
Critics argue that the sanctions chiefly punish ordinary Cubans and foreign workers who depend on tourism jobs, while doing little to alter the behaviour of the government they target, and that Meliá's withdrawal shows how such measures can inadvertently harm livelihoods rather than officials insulated from economic pressure. They also object to Washington applying extraterritorial pressure to a Spanish company operating legally under EU and Spanish law, viewing it as an overreach that undermines the sovereignty of allied nations to set their own foreign and trade policy. For these critics, decades of embargo have already demonstrated limited success in achieving political change in Cuba, making further tightening look more like symbolic posturing than effective policy.