Cuba needs modernising – but it can manage without McDonald's

This long-isolated country has lost a lot, but it is in danger of being spoilt in countless ways – the golden arches included

Though the chain once loomed large in my children’s lives, nowadays I try not to think about McDonald’s more than a couple of times a year. So it came as a shock to discover that decades of economic sanctions mean that Cuba is one of the few countries in the world without a single branch of the fast-food restaurant.

No Starbucks either, no Coke (though Sprite seems to have been smuggled in). In a world of cloned high streets, awash with mostly bland global brands, it’s an extraordinary thought. “Maybe it will be a good thing that McDonald’s doesn’t open. It will be the first step towards our death,” the Guardian quoted a Havana hotel concierge as saying after the US president, Barack Obama, arrived to shake hands with his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro.

Related: McDonald's 34,492 restaurants: where are they?

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