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Berta Soler and Iván Hernández Carrillo, two activists who live in Cuba, sent video messages to the “Cuba en el umbral” event held on November 3 in Madrid, where Rosa María Payá presented the transition plan for the island one day before the 30th Ibero-American Summit.
The messages were shown on screen at the Hotel Wellington, after remarks by Albert Ramdin, secretary general of the OAS, and Polish member of the European Parliament Arkadiusz Mularczyk. Soler spoke as a representative of the Ladies in White. Hernández Carrillo, introduced at the event as coordinator of Cuba’s independent trade unions, spoke as a member of the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba (ASIC, for its Spanish initials). Their statements below come from that video, published by Cubanos por el Mundo on YouTube. Quotes are translated from Spanish.
Berta Soler calls for freedom for political prisoners and excludes the Communist Party
Soler thanked the organizers for inviting the Ladies in White and said the group will back a transition to democracy that arises from the direct action of the Cuban people and results in the end of the communist regime. Her priorities were the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the participation of all political forces inside and outside Cuba, except the Communist Party.
She also said the transition cannot rest on the current Constitution and called for courts that protect victims and where “criminals pay for their crimes,” with transparent and impartial justice, free from political or economic interests and not “tainted by hatred and resentment.”
Explaining those exclusions, she said the Communist Party is “the cause of and the party responsible for the suffering of the Cuban people” and called the Constitution “the legal pamphlet” that protects the impunity of those responsible. She added that the regime remains in place and keeps up the harassment, persecution and imprisonment for political reasons of those who oppose it.
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Iván Hernández Carrillo demands union freedom and dignified work
Hernández Carrillo spoke as an independent trade unionist. He said that to think about the Cuba of tomorrow one must face the Cuba of today, “marked by fear, by control,” and that a transition is not about replacing one power with another but about rebuilding the country from its base. He described workers with “miserable wages,” in undignified conditions and afraid to complain.
His priorities: recovering union freedom; thinking of a future Cuba for everyone, including state and private employees, the self-employed, informal workers and retirees; and guaranteeing a minimum of dignity with decent work, job safety, rest and social protection. “Without union freedom there is no true democracy in the world of work,” he said.
He also called for genuine social dialogue among workers, employers and the State, and argued that an independent union can be a “school of citizenship.” He closed by saying that the future Cuba must be built on truth, freedom, justice and the dignity of working people.
The transition plan presented in Madrid
The proposal presented in Madrid stems from the Liberation Agreement (in Spanish), signed on March 2, 2026, in Miami by Pasos de Cambio and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. It calls for three phases and a transition government lasting 18 to 36 months, with no extension, leading to a binding plebiscite and free elections.
Who are Berta Soler and Iván Hernández Carrillo
Soler represents the Ladies in White, the movement to which the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2005 (in Spanish). In May she lamented the exile of Lady in White Sissi Abascal Zamora, who arrived in Miami with her mother.
ASIC was founded in Havana in October 2016, according to an urgent appeal from the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (in Spanish), a program of FIDH and OMCT. That January 2017 document identified Hernández Carrillo as the organization’s secretary general, denounced harassment of its members and recalled that he was sentenced to 25 years in prison during the 2003 Black Spring and released in 2011.
Read the full coverage of the presentation of the transition plan for Cuba.
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