Dubbed “the world’s bravest blogger,” Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez just won the prestigious Ortega and Gasset Prize for Digital Journalism, recognizing the defense of freedom and independence in Spanish journalism. Her selection is interesting for a couple reasons: She writes frankly and critically about life in Communist Cuba, and she signs her name on all her stories.

Sanchez’s blog Generacion Y is getting over 1 million hits a month. She says, “I have talked about things like Fidel Castro, and you know how taboo that can be.” Her blog speaks to both the mundane and the striking atrocities of socialism in Cuba.

Since February, Fidel’s brother and successor Raul Castro has lifted bans on consumer electronics (including PCs), cell phones, and staying in luxury tourist hotels.

Internet access, however, is another story. Foreigners, government employees, and academics are allowed Internet accounts administered by the state. Everyone else is dependent upon patchy service, limited access, and long lines. These restrictions don’t stop black-market Internet access or hacked Internet from administered accounts. In order to post her stories, Sanchez sneaks into posh hotel internet cafes and pays high fees to upload her stories from flash drives to the site.

Last week, accessing her site began taking longer and longer; convenient since most Cubans don’t have the cash to pay for Internet access. Government efforts to block her site have been unsuccessful, but the 20 minutes it now takes to load her site from Cuba is dissuading many from reading it. But she is not backing down. “This is just fuel for my fire,” she says.

In 2003 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a study exploring the “impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule.” The book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes, concluded that “the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.”