Madrid/The Cuban authorities have arrested Martiño Ramos Soto in Havana, the teacher sentenced in Spain to 13 and a half years in prison for abusing and raping an underage student, as confirmed by EFE.
In recent hours, the Spanish National Police had asked the Cuban authorities to increase surveillance over Martiño Ramos Soto, although it was not ruled out that he could have left the country. The professor from Ourense, former member of the left-wing political movement En Marea, had a search and arrest warrant notified to Interpol since October 31, as announced this Monday, in an audio broadcast to the Spanish media by the Government’s deputy delegate in the Galician city, Eladio Santos. Despite this, the island’s authorities had allowed him to live in complete peace until this Monday.
The tension had increased after this Sunday the Madrid newspaper The Spanish and 14ymedio published that the teacher – convicted of sexual abuse of an underage student through sadistic practices when the victim was between 12 and 16 years old – had resided in Cuba since at least July 2025. In the capital he has been living a normal life under the name Martín Soto, but according to this newspaper’s sources, on Friday he suddenly left his accommodation in Havana.
“The case of Martiño Ramos is particular,” explained this Monday the head of the fugitive section of the National Police in Madrid, who took advantage of the opportunity to disseminate the list of the ten most wanted criminals by the institution. One of them is Ramos Soto, who should have entered prison on September 15 and did not go. At that moment, the Spanish authorities activated the alert. The Spanish Police maintain that before arriving in Havana, Ramos passed through Portugal, Brazil and Peru.
/ PNE
“We managed to trace that he had gone to Cuba and we were surprised by how he had done it: it was planned and he used technical means,” the command declared to the press. “Through Cuban authorities we managed to confirm that he was there and that is why we proceeded to request the international arrest warrant from the competent judge.” Although there is no extradition agreement between Spain and Cuba, the Spanish authorities were relatively optimistic and, to apply pressure, the alarm for “the most wanted” had been relaunched. Although there is no treaty, they affirm that “the Government of Spain and the Police continue working so that this person definitively serves his sentence in Spain.”
As stated in the police file, Ramos Soto is 50 years old, has a slim build and dark skin, with gray and curly hair, and brown eyes. It is classified as highly dangerous.
The Madrid environment 20 minutes has published this Monday that the jump to public opinion comes from the Madres Protectoras collective, an association based in the Spanish capital that decided to search on its own after reading the information about Ramos’ escape in the Galician press. “When the news appeared in a Galician newspaper, we spread the photo of his face on our social networks and began to receive messages from people in Ourense with information about his appearance or his car,” they say.
“They sent us the phone number he used there and his Instagram profile as a professional photographer”
Although it took them a while to achieve this, they eventually received information from the Island telling them where he lived and what he did in El Vedado. “They sent us the phone number he used there and his Instagram profile as a professional photographer,” they add. According to their suspicions, they feared that he had fled to Nicaragua by now.
According to the head of fugitives, the press publications could have alerted Ramos. “In anticipation of what could happen, we have asked the Cuban authorities to adopt precautionary measures; we are waiting right now to see if all these international cooperation mechanisms work,” he said. However, according to sources 14ymediothe possible escape of the pedophile occurred days before his presence on the Island became public opinion, although it cannot be ruled out that some contact who knew what was going to happen warned the man from Ourense.
According to data released by the Police, since the international order was activated on October 31, Cuba was notified to apply precautionary measures. However, Ramos has spent three weeks living in relative normality. “He always avoided foreigners and even more so Europeans and Spaniards. Some friends believe that he has someone who helps him,” he tells 14ymedio an acquaintance of the fugitive, who asks to remain anonymous. “Maybe he left because there were already too many people asking him who he was and he felt pressured. All his friends were young people in their twenties. He invited them to his house and to sleep a lot, but he never went overboard,” he adds.
