Spain extradites child-abuse fugitive from Cuba, sends him to prison

Martiño Ramos Soto, who had turned Cuba into a refuge after fleeing Spain, was extradited from Havana and sent to prison on 23 April 2026. The former En Marea founder had been hiding under the false name Martín Soto, but the cover fell apart after Spanish police and Cuban authorities closed in on one of Spain’s most wanted fugitives.

Ramos Soto was 50 years old and from Ourense in Galicia. The Provincial Court of Ourense had sentenced him to 13 years and 6 months in prison for sexually abusing a minor student over several years, with the victim said to have been 12 when the abuse began and 16 when it ended. Spanish police placed him among the country’s 10 most wanted fugitives after he disappeared in July 2025.

His route out of Spain ran through Portugal, Brazil and Peru before he reached Cuba, where he remained until the arrest. Spanish reporting says the break in the case came after a young Cuban tagged him on Instagram, helping authorities identify him in Havana. That tip, combined with police work from Spain’s National Police Fugitive Location Section and Cuba’s Policía Nacional Revolucionaria, brought an end to the search.

The extradition request was formally made by the Audiencia Provincial de Ourense on 31 October 2025, after his whereabouts in Havana were confirmed. Even then, the process remained complicated. Spanish outlets said Cuba did not have an active extradition treaty with Spain, a gap that made the case a test of how far bilateral cooperation could stretch when no formal legal framework was in place.

That is what makes the Ramos Soto case stand out beyond the crimes that put him on the run. Cuba has long been viewed as a refuge for fugitives who can slip across borders and disappear into a new identity. This time, Havana handed one back. Whether that signals a broader shift in Cuba-Europe legal cooperation or just a selective response to a high-profile manhunt remains to be seen, but the message is plain enough: Cuba was his refuge, not his escape.