Rosa María Payá presents plan for Cuba’s transition: three phases and a government of up to 36 months

Cuban opposition leader Rosa María Payá, founder of Cuba Decide and coordinator of Pasos de Cambio, presented a three-phase transition plan for Cuba on Nov. 3 in Madrid, including a transitional government of 18 to 36 months with no extension, leading to a binding plebiscite and free elections. She spoke one day before the 30th Ibero-American Summit.

What Payá said at the event

Payá said Cuba is closer to freedom than many imagine, not because the dictatorship is less cruel, but because its failure, after nearly seven decades, is absolute. She said the proposal is for all Cubans, including those still inside the dictatorship’s institutions, and that the transition is the responsibility of Cubans: “today we are taking it on.”

To support that claim, Payá said 94% of Cubans live in extreme poverty and that the military conglomerate GAESA came to accumulate up to $18 billion in current assets, a figure she said exceeds the international reserves of countries such as Costa Rica or Panama.

The 94% figure matches the 9th Study on Social Rights in Cuba by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, which bases its estimate on a survey of 1,318 people conducted in June and July 2026, comparing reported household income with a benchmark of $1.90 per person per day. The GAESA figure is close to the nearly $17.9 billion shown in internal documents from March 2024 published by the Miami Herald; Cubanos por el Mundo has not independently verified those documents. The comparison no longer holds for Costa Rica, whose Central Bank reported net international reserves of about $20.9 billion in April 2026, up from $13.46 billion in 2024. Panama’s reserves stood at about $6.8 billion in 2023.

As she began her remarks, a woman interrupted the event to denounce the U.S. embargo. Payá replied that “those responsible are in power,” in the Castro family and the group of generals, and accused the dictatorship of sending “its representatives.” She said that if the woman was willing to listen, she was invited back.

She also recalled her father, opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, who died in a 2012 car crash and who, she said, “was murdered by the same dictators who still want to confuse us with their propaganda.” In a 2023 report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held the Cuban state responsible for the deaths of Payá and fellow dissident Harold Cepero.

What the three-phase transition plan for Cuba proposes

According to Payá, the plan sets out three phases: liberation, stabilization and reconstruction, and democratization. It also includes a humanitarian program for the first six months and proposals on the economy, institutions and the reunification of the nation.

• 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 guarantees for fundamental rights. “There is no transition with repression,” she stressed.
• Stabilization and reconstruction, ending in democratization. A transitional government with defined responsibilities and a limited mandate of 18 to 36 months, with no extension.
• Cubans decide. A binding plebiscite to decide the new constitutional framework, and free, plural and competitive elections.

Beyond the phases, Payá listed these priorities for the plan:

• Immediate humanitarian aid in the first six months, with food, medicine, electricity supply and the recovery of hospitals and schools.
• A free economy, with legal certainty, private property and investment.
• Institutions and justice. Reform of the security and defense institutions under civilian authority; a new foreign policy; recognition of victims, accountability and guarantees of non-repetition.
• Reunification of the nation. The embrace between Cubans on and off the island.

Payá said the ultimate goal “is not to administer the transition,” but to return to citizens their right to decide.

Where the plan comes from

The plan stems from the Liberation Accord, signed on March 2, 2026, in Miami by Pasos de Cambio and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. The accord’s text lists four stages: liberation, stabilization, reconstruction and democratization; in Madrid, Payá presented stabilization and reconstruction together as one phase. It was presented at the event “Cuba en el umbral” (“Cuba on the Threshold”) at the Hotel Wellington in Madrid, attended by Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Ramdin. Messages sent from the island by Berta Soler of the Ladies in White and Iván Hernández Carrillo of the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba were shown there.

Read the full coverage of the presentation of the transition plan for Cuba.