After years of frustration, Cubans have been granted a series of small but significant freedoms by their new leader, who has vowed to do away with the “excess of prohibitions” built up during half a century of communist rule.

Since taking over from his older brother as President, Raúl Castro has moved to ease some of the restrictions on the island's population. Now Cubans are allowed to buy some consumer goods in US dollars, including DVD players, mobile phones and computers (although not with an internet connection). Foreign television programmes, such as The Sopranos and Grey's Anatomy, are coming to Cuban screens for the first time, leavening the diet of official programming about the successes of tractor factories or the imperial pretentions of the United States. Cubans are allowed into hotels frequented by foreign tourists - and many expect the younger Castro to loosen restrictions on foreign travel for the few Cubans who can afford it.

News that a British company will open a luxury golf complex will have many people wondering: “Is Cuba preparing to throw open its doors to foreign investment?”

Despite the small measures intended to stop simmering discontent from boiling over, there are few signs that the regime is preparing for radical political or economic change. “Raúl is no Gorbachev and no Deng Xiaoping,” Jaime Suchlicki, a professor at the University of Miami, said, referring to the leaders who opened up the economies of the Soviet Union and China. “He is willing to correct some of the glaring irritants in Cuban society ... yet he is unwilling to move the island much beyond.”

The Government will now pause for breath, analysts say, concerned that recently granted freedoms could be fuelling hopes for a change that they cannot satisfy.

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