Orlando Cartagena, 59, sits unobtrusively in a café in northern Madrid on a Sunday morning. No one around him knows who he is, where he comes from, or what he went through to get there. Just a month ago, Cartagena led the celebrations at the Círculo de Bellas Artes cultural center for the third anniversary of the Republic of Annobón, a small island of 6.5 square miles and about 5,000 inhabitants, whose declaration of independence from Equatorial Guinea has yet to be recognized by any country. “We are fighting for our freedom; we want to be free,” says Cartagena, who introduces himself as the prime minister of Annobón.
The island’s name originates from the passage of a Portuguese expedition on January 1, 1475, which referred to it as Anno bom (“good year,” in Portuguese). Despite more than five centuries of history, few people know of its existence, and the 2022 declaration of independence went unnoticed outside Equatorial Guinea. Last May, interest in Annobón skyrocketed across the Atlantic and became a trending topic 4,660 miles away, in Argentina.
Cartagena and a delegation from Ambo Legadu, the movement that declared independence, toured the South American country in March and raised the possibility of the island becoming part of Argentine territory. “We can be part of an Argentine province or an associated state,” he told a local radio station.
The comment appealed to a shared past. At the end of the 18th century, Portugal ceded this and other African territories to Spain, which administratively assigned them to the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, in the present-day territory of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
“These are formulas that we could negotiate with the Argentine government at some point,” Cartagena comments, although he clarifies that the priority is to seek diplomatic recognition. “We have to be free before deciding,” he concludes. The leader of Ambo Legadu asserts that he has met with Argentine senators and representatives, although he has not had contact with Javier Milei’s administration. The delegation returned to the South American country last week to file a complaint for crimes against humanity against the government of Teodoro Obiang.
The declaration of independence has not pleased the authorities in Equatorial Guinea, which establishes in its Constitution that Annobón is an “inalienable” part of its territory and considers the separatist movement “illegal” and “incited by the West.” They have also opened a lawsuit against Cartagena and other leaders of the group. For three years, the territory has been under close surveillance by hundreds of soldiers deployed on the island and by the central government.
Open wounds
These tensions are not new. Since independence from Spain and its incorporation as part of Equatorial Guinea in 1968, the relationship between the central government and the remote island — with a distinct ethnic identity and its own language — has been turbulent and marked by fierce isolation.
In 1972, after proclaiming himself president for life, Francisco Macías Nguema banned entry and exit from Annobón. A year later, a cholera epidemic broke out, which is estimated to have wiped out nearly half the population, who had no access to medicines, vaccines, or basic necessities.
“There was nothing and everything was missing,” recalls Juan Tomás Ávila, a writer of Annobonese origin, explaining that the repression of those years is crucial to understanding the Annobonese distrust of central power and the open wounds that have spurred the independence movement.
After the 1979 military coup by Obiang, the dictator’s nephew, things did not improve. In the 1980s, international media revealed the Equatorial Guinean government’s plans to store millions of tons of toxic waste from Europe in Annobón. This newspaper sent a request to the Equatorial Guinean Embassy in Spain to hear their version of this and other allegations, but received no response.
In 1993, a social protest erupted, culminating in violent military repression and the murder of two people. Equatorial Guinea blamed Spain for inciting the revolt, suspended humanitarian aid deliveries, militarized the island, and blamed around 20 islanders for what happened.
Among those arrested was Cartagena, who was tortured and sentenced to death, as documented by Amnesty International. “It’s a mafia. We’ve been like this for 57 years,” he says. Cartagena spent 14 months in prison until he received a pardon. Since then, he has been in exile in Spain.
Obiang, who will celebrate his 43rd year in power in October, has announced a series of projects in recent years to lift the island out of poverty and underdevelopment, ranging from a luxury hotel to drinking water plants. But those in exile are denouncing these projects as “a fiasco,” such as a tuna processing plant that has not materialized since the contract was awarded in 2019. Last year, the Spanish businessman in charge of the project was arrested in Gijón for corruption and paying bribes to high-ranking regime officials.
International condemnation
The dispute between residents and the central government has escalated to the United Nations. In July 2024, a group of residents wrote a manifesto against the dynamite explosions carried out by Somagec, a civil engineering company that has amassed hundreds of millions of euros in contracts and is searching for minerals on the island. Locals complain that the explosions have damaged their homes and the ecosystem, and they presented a “plea” to Obiang to stop the work.
In response, the regime detained 23 local residents, according to a complaint filed two months later with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD). According to this version, the detainees were transported to Malabo on a presidential fleet plane, a common modus operandi for the kidnapping of opponents and political prisoners in Equatorial Guinea.
Another 19 Annobón residents living off the island — accused of conspiring against the regime — were arrested. The military contingent was reinforced, and the internet on Annobón was also cut off in retaliation, leaving it without service to this day, according to the NGO Access Now. “Those responsible for the crimes of rebellion and sedition in Annobón will be held accountable before the law for their actions,” warned Vice President Teodorin Obiang, the president’s son, on social media. All measures to silence the protest were taken within a 48-hour period.
“A friend called me and told me my wife was detained,” says Pepe Yao, husband of Estrella Alfaro, one of the island’s best-known artists. The couple was planning to travel to Spain to celebrate the anniversary of the Republic of Annobón, but Alfaro was denied entry into Equatorial Guinea just days before her arrest, in the middle of the night and without a court order. Most of the detainees were taken to Black Beach Prison, considered one of the worst in the world.
Last April, the U.N. WGAD stated that the detainees’ right to a fair trial had been violated and declared the detentions arbitrary.
To avoid a scandal, the Obiang regime was not notified of the decision until almost two months later. In early June, on the occasion of his 83rd birthday, the president announced that in a “spirit of magnanimity,” he was pardoning the Annobonese, among other detainees, on the condition that they apologize on state television and behave like “repentant citizens,” without mentioning that an international resolution was pending.
“My wife went almost a year without seeing the sun,” Yao says. A photograph taken just days after her release from prison shows Alfaro as a completely different woman. Her long hair had been shaved off and her face looks gaunt. Her husband’s greatest wish is for her to leave Equatorial Guinea. “Her crime was composing songs,” her husband laments.
The panorama for Annobón is full of unknowns. If recognized in the future, it would be the smallest independent country in Africa. In exile, there is hope that international support will bolster the Annobonese struggle to defend their place in the world. “They want to erase us,” Yao says.
“Declaring independence is fighting for our lives,” Cartagena declares, before disappearing back into the crowd.
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