Cristina Lage Dávila is the owner of a luxurious restaurant chain in Havana.
MIAMI, United States. – Cristina Lage Codorniú, youngest daughter of former Cuban vice president Carlos Lage Dávila, has established herself as the owner of a chain of luxury restaurants in Havana, according to documents a report of Martí Newswhich also points out that the young woman is the holder of a US visa and frequently travels to the United States and Europe.
According to this investigation, the businesswoman shares ownership of Group Tentacioones SRL with her husband, Orlando Alain Rodríguez Leyva. The sources consulted by Martí News indicate that the company operates several high-end businesses in Havana, while the origin of the capital and the conditions that have allowed its expansion remain surrounded by opacity.
The Group Tentacioones SRL web portal, cited in the report, does not identify its owners, but presents the establishments as “the materialized dream of a family passionate about hospitality and the rich gastronomic heritage of Cuba.” This corporate “family” formula contrasts with the political career of the businesswoman’s father, deposed in 2009 after being accused of succumbing to the “honeys of power.”
Exclusive restaurants and unaffordable prices
According to Martí NewsCristina Lage Codorniú has a degree in Law and a copyright manager, as she herself has published on social networks. Daughter of Carlos Aurelio Lage Dávila and Emma Rosa Codorniu Pujals, she is listed as the owner of the restaurants Sensacioones, Woow and NaO Habana, as well as a food delivery service called IFood. Together, these ventures employ more than 40 people.
The report describes NaO Habana, located in the historic center of Havana, as a space that is presented to its clientele as “a journey to culinary authenticity”, with rooms that rescue traditional Cuban cuisine “but with a refinement reserved for a few”, in an environment of an impoverished and ruined old city.
In the Playa municipality, the Sensacioones restaurant offers, according to the description collected by Martí Newsan experience that “has little to envy” of haute cuisine establishments in Miami or Madrid. Its menu includes Angus meats, elaborate sauces, imported wines, steak tartare prepared at the table and dishes such as spaghetti with porcini funghi, served with scenic display.
For its part, WOOW is presented as the group’s most modern proposal and focuses on “world-class” cocktails, pizzas with “truffle perfume” and imported salami, in line with the conglomerate’s high-end profile.
The starkest contrast, the research highlights, appears in the prices. “A single dish in the Tentacioones Group restaurants costs more than what a Cuban earns in an entire month of work.” While the average state salary is around 6,649 Cuban pesos—equivalent to about 15 dollars at the real exchange rate—in NaO Havana a steak tartare amounts to $23.55. In Sensacioones, a “24kt gold Angus sirloin” costs $47, almost three months of average salary. The exclusive Tomahawk Gallego exceeds $114, a figure that is equivalent to more than half a year’s salary for most of the island’s workers.
Patrimonial opacity and family silence
Martí News Remember that there is no official information on the ownership of these businesses. This opacity, the text points out, is consistent with “the opacity that Castroism usually uses to hide the fortunes of the private class born from proximity to power.” The report adds that Cristina Lage Codorniú did not respond to the request for comment sent by the outlet.
In the work itself it is recognized that CubaNet was the first medium in report the properties of Carlos Lage’s youngest daughter.
Cat’s daughter…
Former Cuban vice president Carlos Lage Dávila is a doctor by profession, he was president of the University Student Federation (FEU) and later first secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), replacing Luis Orlando Domínguez. Roberto Robaina, also dismissed at the time, would later succeed him.
In 1980, Lage joined the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and, in the middle of that decade, he was appointed secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, replacing Osmani Cienfuegos. From that position and as a substitute member of the Political Bureau, he became one of Fidel Castro’s most trusted men. In 1993 he was promoted to vice president of the Council of State and later to secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, with broad powers to manage the economy during the hardest years of the so-called “Special Period.”
His role in managing the economic crisis of the 1990s earned him the nickname “economic czar” and many saw him as a possible successor to Castro, recalls Martí Noticias.
In March 2009, after Fidel Castro’s illness and the transfer of power to Raúl Castro, Lage’s career collapsed. On March 2 of that year, the Council of State announced his dismissal along with that of the then chancellor Felipe Pérez Roque, in a restructuring that affected dozens of senior officials. The next day, both published resignation letters in the official newspaper Granma in which they accepted “errors” and promised to continue as “soldiers of the Revolution,” according to the report.
After more than a decade of silence, in 2021 Carlos Lage reappeared in a video for his 70th birthday. In that material the former vice president declared that he continues to trust in the Revolution and that he firmly believes that “socialism is a more just and more humane society.”
In this way, Cristina Lage belongs to a family network closely linked to the political and economic power of the country. His brother Carlos Lage Codorniú was national president of the Federation of University Students (FEU) between 2005 and 2007. After his father’s political collapse, he held different positions until representing Cuba in the United Nations.
Lage’s other son, César, also served as a student leader in the official system. The report indicates that in 2014 he was registered as a director of COMELY GROUP SA, a company based in Panama.
Cristina’s uncle, Agustín Lage, Carlos’s brother, directed the Cuban Molecular Immunology Center for years. He currently appears as an advisor to the president of BioCubaFarma, a state conglomerate in charge of the export of medical products, according to the same job.
