Rosa María Payá unveils Cuba transition plan in Madrid

Cuban opposition leader Rosa María Payá on Tuesday, Nov. 3, unveiled in Madrid, alongside Pasos de Cambio, the team and the plan for a transition in Cuba, one day before the 30th Ibero-American Summit opens in the Spanish capital. The plan lays out three phases and a transition government lasting 18 to 36 months, with no extensions, leading to a binding plebiscite and free elections.

Opening the event, Payá said freedom is a right of the Cuban people and that the transition is their responsibility. Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Albert Ramdin said that after nearly 70 years it is normal to evaluate and rethink Cuba’s system, and that now is the time to do so. He made clear he was speaking as secretary general and not on behalf of member states, ruled out a violent transition and called for the unconditional release of political prisoners. Dominican Foreign Minister Víctor Bisonó Haza also voiced support for change in Cuba, and Polish Member of the European Parliament Arkadiusz Mularczyk argued for suspending the political agreement between the European Union and the Cuban regime.

What we know so far

The presentation of the team and the plan, at an event titled “Cuba on the Threshold” at Madrid’s Hotel Wellington, is the first to take place in public. The 30th Ibero-American Summit is being held in Madrid on Nov. 4 and 5.

The plan grows out of the Liberation Accord, signed on March 2, 2026, in Miami by Pasos de Cambio and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. It proposes a phased roadmap, with a transition government of limited duration that culminates in free elections. According to Cuba Decide, its three phases are liberation; stabilization and reconstruction; and democratization.

Payá announced the presentation on Oct. 16 in Madrid, when she received the FAES Freedom Award.

What was said at the event

Opening: “The night will not be eternal”

Payá opened the event by saying that for 67 years some have tried to convince Cubans otherwise, but that Cubans know freedom is their right. She added that the transition is their own responsibility, because Cuba’s future belongs to everyone.

She also recalled words left to her by her father, Oswaldo Payá, which she said ring truer today than ever: “The night will not be eternal.” The phrase is the title of the book Oswaldo Payá finished shortly before his death in 2012, La noche no será eterna.

In her opening remarks she extended a special welcome to OAS Secretary General Albert Ramdin, who was in attendance, and thanked Dominican Foreign Minister Víctor Bisonó Haza for taking part.

Dominican foreign minister backs change in Cuba

Bisonó Haza expressed his support for the transformation he said must take place in Cuba so that there can be democracy, freedom and guarantees for human rights. He apologized for being unable to attend in person, citing an unexpected change in the summit’s official agenda and his commitments to the Dominican community, and thanked Payá, whom he called a friend, for inviting him to the discussion.

“This is exactly the right moment,” he said. He argued that Latin American fellowship and support for the values of freedom must come quickly to a transformation that allows Cubans to choose and to have a better future. He added that no one is better suited than Payá to carry that banner and assured her she can always count on his support.

Mularczyk: Reconciliation does not mean impunity

Polish MEP Arkadiusz Mularczyk spoke next. His remarks are paraphrased here from the event’s simultaneous interpretation. He said he served for nearly 20 years in the Polish Parliament and recalled that Poland lived through almost four decades of communism before regaining its freedom thanks to the courage of ordinary people, the Solidarity movement and the moral conviction of John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Cuba, he said, stands on the threshold of change: the loss of Venezuelan support and constant blackouts have exposed the communist system, while political prisoners sit behind bars and families struggle to survive.

He said Poland’s experience offers three lessons. The first is that removing communism is not enough: Poland joined NATO and the European Union and built one of Europe’s largest economies, but, he said, it made mistakes during its transition. Among them he cited poorly drafted decommunization laws, communist elites who retained considerable power within institutions, privatizations that benefited only certain groups and a lack of accountability for crimes against humanity.

The second is that freedom requires real justice. He noted that Poland created an institute to preserve memory and prosecute the crimes of the communist regime, invited Cubans to visit it in Warsaw and said it is far less costly to learn from Poland’s mistakes than to repeat them. A democratic Cuba, he argued, must preserve the archives of its state security agencies so that it can demand accountability, and reconciliation and transition do not mean impunity.

The third is that economic transformation must benefit the Cuban people. He said Cuba will need private property laws and institutions that keep new monopolies from replacing those once controlled by communist elites, and that Cubans on and off the island must have a voice in the new Cuba.

Mularczyk said he was very glad to learn of the Liberation Accord, in which civic organizations are joining forces to prepare the transition, and stressed that Cuba’s future must be decided by Cubans themselves. He added that Europe also bears great responsibility and that in the European Parliament they are working toward a free and democratic Cuba and toward suspending the political agreement between the EU and the Cuban regime. He closed by warning that regaining freedom is only the beginning and that the fall of communism cannot mark the end of the fight for it.

After he spoke, he was thanked for his support for democratic change in Cuba, and the commitments of the Liberation Accord and preparation for the transition were described as a responsibility shared on and off the island.

OAS chief Albert Ramdin: Now is the time to rethink Cuba’s system

Ramdin spoke in English; his remarks are paraphrased here from the event’s Spanish simultaneous interpretation rather than quoted verbatim. He made clear he was speaking as OAS secretary general and not on behalf of states, because the matter has not been discussed among member countries. For him, he said, this is a question of principle rather than politics, and when the organization’s pillars (democracy, human rights, the right to development and security) are at stake, one has to speak up.

He called for expanding democratic space in the Americas and lamented that the OAS has lost Nicaragua and that Cuba and Venezuela are listed as inactive states. He said he would be very happy if all three countries returned to the organization, to a place where they would be treated with respect and where disagreement is possible.

On Cuba, he argued that when a system has not worked after nearly 70 years, it is normal to evaluate and rethink it; that they may have been ideas at the outset but they have not worked, and that now is the time to do so. He added that a one-party system almost always ends in tyranny and that democracy needs a multiparty system.

Ramdin made clear that he does not advocate a violent transition or change through military force, which he said would run counter to the character and laws of the OAS, and he defended a peaceful process built on dialogue and communication. He acknowledged that the system is more entrenched and more solid in Cuba than in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Among the elements of a transition, he cited opening civic space so that other organizations can make themselves heard inside Cuba without repercussions, and the unconditional release of all political prisoners. He insisted that the transition must be led by Cubans and benefit Cubans, and said it is not for him to determine who is Cuban, but for Cubans themselves.

He closed by saying the OAS was created to help and to stand on the side of democracy, and that it will be ready to assist the process. He acknowledged there will be political discussions in which he will follow instructions, but said he has his own point of view.

Messages from Cuba: Berta Soler and Iván Hernández Carrillo

After Ramdin, messages were shown on screen from two activists speaking from the island: Berta Soler, representative of the Ladies in White, and Iván Hernández Carrillo, of the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba (ASIC).

Soler thanked the organizers for inviting the Ladies in White and said the group will support and back a transition to democracy that springs from the direct action of the Cuban people and ends the communist regime. Among the issues she considered most important, she cited the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the participation of all political forces on and off the island, with the exception of the Communist Party.

She explained that the Communist Party cannot take part because, in her view, it is the cause of the Cuban people’s suffering and is responsible for it, and that the current communist Constitution shields those responsible from punishment. She called for courts that protect victims and make criminals pay for their crimes, with transparent and impartial justice, free of political or economic influence and without hatred or resentment. She noted that the regime continues to impoverish the people and to harass, persecute and imprison them for political reasons. She identified herself as a 2005 Sakharov Prize laureate.

Hernández Carrillo spoke as an independent trade unionist. He said that to think about the Cuba of tomorrow one must look squarely at the Cuba of today, “marked by fear, by control,” and argued that a transition does not mean swapping one power for another but rebuilding the country from the ground up. His priorities: restoring union freedom, so that workers can organize and elect their leaders without persecution; thinking about a future Cuba for everyone, however they earn a living, including state employees, private-sector workers, the self-employed, informal workers and retirees; and guaranteeing a minimum of dignity, with decent work, occupational safety and health, rest and social protection.

He also called for genuine social dialogue among workers, employers and the state, rather than a consultation controlled from above, and argued that an independent union can be a “school of citizenship.” He closed by saying a future Cuba must be built on truth, freedom, justice and the dignity of working people.

A video with data on the crisis on the island was then shown. Among the figures it cited: 94% of the population lives below the poverty line and hospitals face a 70% shortage of medicines. These figures come from the material shown at the event and have not been verified by this outlet.

Payá presents the plan: Three phases and a transition government of up to 36 months

Payá returned to the stage, introduced as the founder of Cuba Decide and coordinator of Pasos de Cambio. As she began, an audience member spoke up to denounce the embargo and what the person described as a U.S. policy of harassment toward the Cuban people, and the event was briefly interrupted.

Payá replied that they had been wondering why something like that had not happened yet and that the Cuban people are living through their darkest moment because of 67 years of communism. She said those responsible are in power, in the Castro family and the group of generals, and that her proposal is for all Cubans, including those still inside the dictatorship’s institutions, because, she said, they and their families need liberation too. As for the person who interrupted, she said that person is welcome to come back and listen.

She again invoked her father, Oswaldo Payá, who she said could have chosen exile but stayed in Cuba, and argued that freedom is not a concession from those in power but a right. Cuba, she said, is closer to freedom than many imagine, not because the dictatorship is any less cruel, but because its failure, after nearly seven decades, is absolute.

To describe conditions on the island she offered the following figures, which are her own claims at the event and have not been verified by this outlet: that 94% of Cubans live in extreme poverty, that twice as many people died in Cuba last year as were born, and that the military conglomerate GAESA came to hold as much as $18 billion in current assets, a figure she said exceeds the international reserves of countries such as Costa Rica or Panama. She also spoke of blackouts, shortages of drinking water and medicine, and garbage piling up in the streets. The 94% figure matches the ninth study on social rights in Cuba by the Madrid-based Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH).

She thanked and encouraged the United States and allies in the Americas and Europe to keep up the pressure alongside the Cuban people until liberation is achieved, but insisted that the transition is the responsibility of Cubans and that “today we are taking it on.” She said democratic organizations on and off the island have come together in the Liberation Accord and are working in coordination to offer a plan. She invited those with other ideas for Cuba to walk alongside them and said that in the Cuba they want to build there will be room for every voice.

What the Cuba transition plan proposes

• Liberation. It begins with the unconditional release of all political prisoners and includes the removal from power of the Castro family and its generals, an end to repression and a guarantee of fundamental rights. “There is no transition with repression,” she stressed.
• Stabilization and reconstruction, through to democratization. It calls for a transition government with defined responsibilities and a limited mandate of 18 to 36 months, with no extensions.
• Cubans decide. Through a binding plebiscite, they will decide on the new constitutional framework and the calling of free, plural and competitive elections, the first in more than 70 years.
• Immediate humanitarian assistance. Priorities for the first six months: delivering food and medicine, stabilizing the power supply and restoring hospitals, schools and essential services.
• Economy. Foundations for a free economy, with legal certainty, private property, opportunities to start businesses, a recovery in national production and the attraction of investment, along with a state that protects the most vulnerable.
• Institutions and justice. Reform of security and defense institutions, placed under civilian authority and the constitutional order; a new foreign policy; recognition of victims, assignment of responsibility and guarantees of non-repetition.
• Reuniting the nation. A principle that, she said, runs through the entire plan: the embrace between Cubans on and off the island.

Payá said the transition government cannot decide Cuba’s future forever: Its task is to create the conditions for Cubans to decide it, because the ultimate goal “is not to manage the transition” but to return to citizens their right to choose.

She announced that, for the first time, those who have worked on the Cuba transition plan would present the concrete measures for responding to the humanitarian emergency and rebuilding institutions.

Humanitarian response: Free aid with no political conditions

The moderator introduced Yaxys Cires Dib, a lawyer who serves as vice president of the Christian Democrat Organization of America and director of strategy at the OCDH, where he has coordinated studies on social conditions in Cuba. He thanked Payá for inviting him to a project he called inspiring and recalled that, as had been said at the event, 94% of Cubans live in extreme poverty. For that reason, he said, the transition must be not only political and economic but “deeply social,” and the deterioration demands a swift and extraordinary response.

He explained that the humanitarian response plan covers the first 180 days of the transition and highlighted three elements. First, immediate attention to essential needs, with a deployment in the first 72 hours to guarantee food rations, drinking water, medicine and medical supplies, with priority for vulnerable families, older adults and the chronically ill.

Second, a national authority and a legal framework to facilitate the emergency response, along with operational and logistical hubs inside and outside the country, where Cuban professionals, civil society, religious communities and the exile community will play a central role. Third, a guarantee that aid will be free and transparent and that no Cuban will have to prove a political affiliation or meet any condition to receive it.

He said a response of that scale requires support from allies, particularly the United States, but also Ibero-America, Spain and the European Union. He closed by addressing Cubans living in extreme poverty: “No one will be left behind,” he said, adding that the transition will mean not only freedom but also a dignified life.

Security and keeping institutions running

The moderator said ensuring citizens’ safety and the functioning of institutions is essential during the transition and introduced Armando Ibarra, a researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an adviser to the Foundation for Pan-American Democracy and a promoter of Cuba Decide, who for the past year has coordinated the working commission on security during the transition.

Ibarra said that for nearly 70 years in Cuba, state security has meant the security of the regime before that of the people: The police, the military and the intelligence services, he said, have served not to protect Cubans but to watch and punish them, and have been at the center of interference and destabilization in other countries, especially in Ibero-America. That is why, he argued, the transition cannot stop at changing the government but must change the nature of those institutions. He presented a defense, security and public order plan to move from a police state to the rule of law in a peaceful, orderly and irreversible way, and outlined its five pillars:

• Public order from the first hours. One force, one command and clear procedures to prevent a vacuum, disorder, revenge, looting, organized crime and drug trafficking, and to protect key facilities and infrastructure. Without security, he said, humanitarian aid does not reach those who need it.
• Armed forces under civilian authority. All armed and security forces would come under the civilian transition government, with loyalty to the law and not to the Communist Party. The plan also calls for removing from Cuba the Chinese and Russian military and intelligence services that, he said, have propped up the regime.
• An end to repression. Dissolution of State Security, the political police, the rapid response brigades and the surveillance mechanisms of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and the immediate release of all political prisoners. “No one in Cuba will ever again be persecuted for what they think,” he said.
• The military out of the economy. Today, he said, the GAESA conglomerate controls hotels, ports, stores and remittances. Under the plan it would pass to civilian administration, and assets he described as looted would be recovered to rebuild the country.
• Reform of the armed forces and police. They would be restructured, reformed and retrained to become professional, apolitical institutions at the service of citizens. Their members would go through a prior vetting process and swear loyalty to the new legal order; those who pass would have a chance in the new Cuba.

Ibarra said that to carry this out they have the backing of their main allies: the United States, the Ibero-American community and the European Union. He closed by saying the plan exists so that change in Cuba is irreversible and so that weapons “are never again turned against the people.”

Economy: Restoring the peso’s value and shrinking the state

The moderator said economic recovery is indispensable to improving Cubans’ living conditions and introduced Elías Amor Bravo, an economist specializing in the Cuban economy, a former public-sector executive and an economics professor at the University of Valencia.

Amor Bravo said the economy is perhaps the worst legacy the communists leave behind and that action will be needed on both the domestic and external fronts. Domestically, he proposed restoring to the Cuban peso the value he said it loses daily on informal markets, controlling inflation and the expansion of the state sector, and opening space for private activity and foreign investment, especially private investment. He warned that these measures are very risky and may demand sacrifices from the population, but that those sacrifices will be rewarded, unlike the ones Cubans are enduring now.

He argued that to attract foreign investment Cubans must put up their own money, and that this money exists but is “in the wrong place.” According to his figures, which this outlet has not verified, the state accounts for 65% of gross domestic product, compared with an average of about 25% in Latin America, meaning some 40 points of GDP should shift from state activity to the private economy. With that, he said, even the sugar industry could be revived.

He closed by imagining the day Payá signs the repeal of the government and Communist Party’s economic policy documents: the conceptualization of the model, the National Economic and Social Development Plan through 2030 and the program of 176 transformations. That day, he said, he will be happy, but “it will not be the end,” only the beginning. The moderator then added that the transition must also answer the demands for truth and justice.

Transitional justice: “Democracy is not a suicide pact”

Political scientist and researcher Julio M. Shiling, director of Patria de Martí, author of 16 books, the latest on the requirements for Cuba’s democratic transition, and lead adviser on transitional justice, warned that the fall of a dictatorship “does not even remotely guarantee” democracy and that concrete steps are needed. As he explained it, the Cuban case is a model of total domination with kleptocratic leanings, so the work will be considerable: establishing the truth, assigning responsibility, providing redress and breaking with the dictatorship’s symbols.

During the first 100 days of the transition government, he said, several programs would be launched: a historical clarification commission and vetting and lustration processes; a serious investigation of GAESA; an examination of labor violations and the plundering of Cuba’s national heritage; a review of “odious” debts; and the restitution of or compensation for confiscated properties, both residential and commercial, with full rights of tenure for their current occupants.

On the institutional front, Shiling said the 1940 Constitution, updated for the present day, is a necessary starting point, and that the electoral system must exclude anti-system parties and movements such as the Communist Party, because a party cannot be allowed to absorb the state. “Democracy is not a suicide pact,” he said, adding that it needs defense mechanisms to endure. He also spoke of a process of “decommunization,” of memorializing heroes and of rebuilding civil society through civic education and awareness campaigns.

To close, he compared Cuba to a patient recovering from a terrible illness who needs intensive treatment and special care for life to stay healthy: That treatment, he said, is transitional justice. He warned that the “disease” is contagious, so the rest of the Americas and the world’s democracies must be careful, and he added a few words in English for the international guests: Democracy is the next step after liberation, but it requires mechanisms to ensure that Cuba reaches it and maintains the democratic order.

Legal framework: A transition law with a 36-month limit

The moderator introduced Mijail Bonito Lovio, a Cuban lawyer and professor of constitutional and international law who has held positions in Chile’s government, has taken part in legislative drafting and institutional reform processes and coordinates the team’s constitutional and legislative working commission. Before starting, he remarked that if the person who had just interrupted the event had done so in Cuba, that person would be in jail at that very moment, and that this is the difference in how freedom is understood.

Bonito Lovio praised Rosa María Payá’s leadership and said the team holds in its hands, with the support of the sister nations of Ibero-America, “the historic chance to return Cuba to Cubans.” He explained that the democratic transition law is conceived as a provisional statute that sets a legal path to full democracy by a fixed date, with a maximum of 36 months to return sovereignty to the Cuban people through a constitutional plebiscite and general elections.

The mission, he said, is not only to overcome totalitarianism but to refound the nation on the principle that the state serves the human person and not the other way around: Its reason for being is to protect human dignity and the free development of the personality. He said the text draws on Cuba’s successive constitutions, from Guáimaro to that of 1940, on the legal systems of free countries and on the Liberation Accord of March this year.

Among the statute’s guarantees he cited a general and unconditional amnesty for all political prisoners; the restoration of civil liberties, freedom of expression and of the press, association, unionization and political pluralism; and full freedom to enter, leave and settle in the national territory, backed by protective actions and summary habeas corpus. On the economic side, he announced the recognition of private property as an inalienable right, free enterprise, a ban on state monopolies and equal national treatment for the diaspora, nationals and foreign investors.

He said that in its first 90 days the transitional order will create autonomous and neutral bodies, such as a national electoral service and a comptroller general of the republic, in addition to ensuring judicial independence, all under the leadership of a national council that will appoint a transitional government by absolute majority and guarantee the primacy of civilian power over the armed forces. He closed by saying that after three years they will hand over “a republic formed in democracy,” because, he said, democracy does not flourish out of misery and “freedom is the only path to our well-being.”

Editor’s note: Remarks delivered in Spanish have been translated by Cubanos por el Mundo.