Placing zeros to the right seems to be the preferred sport of those who put a price on the homes they sell in Cuba today. A captive market at the end of the day, the buyer could find a lot of surprises in the wide range of classified ads. From...

For World Telecommunication and Information Society Day

They look the same as everyone else: small, restless, ready to play and joke, like any child. But something distinguishes them beyond the neighborhood where they live or...

Please see Hans Rosling's TED Talk: The Magic Washing Machine

From a distance you feel the strokes... bam, bam, bam. The arm raises the thick fat stick and then lets it falls hard on the twisted sheet. The spray of lather explodes with every stroke and...

The building is shaped like a dislocated Star of David. Gray, with a zinc-clad facade and little openings that provoke a strong sense of claustrophobia. The museum is not...

The rumble of a train comes through the window. In Berlin there is always the sound of a train somewhere. I look out and see a very different reality from what my father saw in...

Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The Capitol building in Havana is beginning to emerge from its long punishment. Like a penitent child, it has waited 54...

Last Thursday I was in Havana without leaving Madrid. Thanks to the guitar of Boris Larramendi I took a little hop to the Island. A brief but intense return, on the wings of chords and a good musician. At a place in the Spanish capital we found a group of friends, some graduates from the Faculty of Arts and letters, but also former players in whatever musical groups existed in Cuba in the '90s. I felt at home, because right in the living room of our apartment we had one of these gatherings that we recalled the night before last. We remembered the lemon grass tea with a little sugar with which we restored our energy after carrying our bikes up 14 flights of stairs. But mostly, we recollected the good songs we had heard there, the space for freedom that we managed to create for at least a few hours.

Beyond the choruses and the rice with beans, I particularly enjoyed the reunion with my compatriots. Many of them are still trying to find their way in a Spain hit by the economic crisis and political questions. Some are unemployed, others illegal, several with children born here who don't know the country of their parents; all aware of what is happening in Cuba. Boris sang himself hoarse, and we clapped along until our palms were red and, already past midnight, humor took over and we reveled in jokes.

On one wall a TV showed images recorded on the streets of Havana. The Malecón and the corner of 23rd and L were a visual background accompanying our improvised "Guaracha" around two tables. At one point I realized that the recording that was passing across the screen was from a police security camera. But here this filtered surveillance material was just an amusing video in a space for entertainment. The official eye become banal; control converted into a frivolous daily report. But not even that could distract us from the most important thing happening in that room: the confluence. We were finding a point in common after a long journey and prolonged separation. We were more free than at any gathering in Havana and yet, we were still the fruit of all those Havana gatherings. A blessed past that we have waited for this...

To every city we attach a face, to every place a personality. Camagüey strikes me as a sober lady with a long ancestry, Frankfurt is...

Votes counted: 99.2%. Number of valid votes and percentages.

When information is systematically hidden and distorted, it can happen that a certain event brings to light the prolonged manipulation of the news. This is exactly what happened...

The plane had touched down in Panama and through the windows I saw the harsh sun shining on the pavement. I walked the halls of the airport looking for a bathroom and a place to wait until my next flight. Some young people waiting in the main hall beckoned me...

They stretch out their hands to touch the creature that seems to emerge from the screen. They scream when the dragon opens...

The literature of Mario Vargas Llosa has prompted several key turning points in my life. The first was 17 years ago, in a summer of blackouts and economic crisis. Under the pretext of borrowing The...

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Freedom Tower, Miami

Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving...

I've found a Cuba outside of Cuba, I told a friend a few days ago. He laughed at my play on words, thinking I was trying to create literature. But no. In Brazil, a septuagenarian excitedly gave me a medal of the Virgin...

"In life there are loves you can never forget..." says one of the songs recorded by the flamenco singer El Cigala accompanied on piano by Bebo Valdés. A few days ago, this man of 94 years died, after more than five decades of not returning to the Island of Cuba....

It's cold in the Hague. Through the window I can see a seagull find a piece of a cookie on the sidewalk. In the warmth of a local bar several activists are speaking of their respective realities. From one corner of the table a Mexican journalist explains the risk of...

Mexico does not allow for half measures, and does not admit that we remain unscathed. It's like spice on the tongue, tequila in the throat and the sun in our eyes. Five days in the land of the feathered serpent and it was hard for me to board the plane...

I froze my ears off in Prague and from the window of the number 14 tram I could see Misha, the little bear holding a Kalashnikov. I immediately remembered this icon of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the...

It was a question of dates, of choosing a date on the calendar to announce what many of us had already imagined. The news of the Hugo Chavez's death was produced on Tuesday afternoon, but for months his early end was predictable. The official Cuban media have maintained a version...

What is different? The smells and the temperature, I think at first. Then come the noises, so unique in each place, the grayness of the winter sky or the...