The depophile case reopened the debate on the viability of extradition in the absence of an agreement between Madrid and Havana.
MIAMI, United States. – Senators from the Popular Party (PP) registered in the Senate a battery of questions to the Government to demand information about the diplomatic efforts aimed at achieving the delivery to Spain of Martiño Ramos Soto, the teacher sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison for abuse and continuous rape of a minor student and detained in Havana.
In the parliamentary document, the signatories—among them Rosa María Sánchez Gándara, Francisco José Fernández Pérez and María del Carmen Leyte Coello, senators elected by Ourense—ask: “What diplomatic efforts is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs taking to expedite your extradition or return to Spain?” They also ask to know “what are the difficulties that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs foresees that may hinder or delay its delivery by the Cuban authorities?” and “what measures is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs taking to ensure the surrender to the Spanish authorities as soon as possible for the full compliance of the sentence imposed?”
Ramos Soto He was arrested in Havana last November 24. His case reopened the debate on the viability of extradition in the absence of a specific agreement between Spain and Cuba. The Spanish Government formally requested extradition, although the process can be complex because both countries “do not have a specific agreement,” according to a report from RTVE based on agency notes. Along the same lines, EFE pointed out that “there seemed” to be “willingness on the part of the two countries to facilitate his transfer to Spain, although there is no extradition agreement in force.”
For the PP, in the process there has been a previous failure of control in Spain. In their written question, the senators emphasize that “the lack of measures” to prevent Ramos Soto’s escape from Spain has generated “great social alarm due to the events that are the subject of his conviction” and maintain that the case “evidenced the failure of all control systems in the face of its extreme seriousness, both due to the concurrence of violence and the victim’s minority.”
The Galician newspaper The Region He linked this parliamentary pressure to the lack of public details about the process and reported that Ramos Soto “continues to be detained in Cuba waiting for his possible transfer to Spain to be resolved.” In addition, he detailed that the fugitive “did not request consular help at the moment” and that he was seeking legal assistance on the Island. The media quoted the Government delegate in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, who declared: “We trust that in the coming days we will have him in Spain serving the sentence to which he was firmly sentenced.”
Ramos Soto was convicted in 2024 by the Provincial Court of Ourense and the Supreme Court ratified the sentence in 2025, with a sentence of “13 and a half years in prison.” After his sentence was confirmed, he fled “using his own passport” on a route that passed through “Portugal, Brazil and Peru” until he reached Cuba.
