“You have to take an aspirin when you drink Bucanero because it gives you a terrible headache.”
14ymedio, Madrid, 17 June 2024 — Cubans do not like their own country’s beer, which is both more expensive and not as good as the imported brands. This helps explain why the island is the second largest overseas market for Spanish brewers. In 2023, 20% of their exports went to Cuba, right behind Portugal at 22% and well ahead of sales to the United Kingdom and France. The figures come from the “2023 Socioeconomic Report on the Spanish Beer Sector,” which was released last week. According to the report, Spanish breweries sold 416 million liters last year, 83.2 million of which were sold on the island.
Jacobo Olalla Marañón, general director of the Spanish Brewers’ Association, which produced the report, told “El Independiente” that private companies have clearly been key to this expansion into the Cuban market. Their dramatic increase in market share began in 2021, when sales of Spanish beer grew 62% over the previous year. They skyrocketed 196% in 2022 and another 193% in 2023.
Spanish breweries sold 416 million liters last year, 83.2 million of which were sold on the island
Olalla Marañón attributes this growth to expanded trade opportunities following Cuba’s relaxation of import restrictions in 2020, which he says have allowed beer and a wide variety of other goods to be brought into the country.
While there have been no new regulatory changes in the interim that specifically deal with foreign trade, Cuba did adopt legislation authorizing the creation of small and medium size private companies (MSMEs). This coincided not only with the Covid-19 pandemic but also with the precipitous fall of the country’s already meager domestic beer production, which has aggravated the trade imbalance.
“The growth of tourism in Cuba has [also] stoked demand for beer in a country where Spanish hospitality companies have a strong presence,” he somewhat erroneously adds. While th
