Mufwene (2007) argues that Creole languages and pidgins developed in separate spaces, where Europeans and non-Europeans interacted differently: pidgins developed in trade colonies whereas Creoles evolved in settlement colonies. The majority of pidgins are concentrated on the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Pacific islands, whereas most Creole languages are found in the Atlantic, the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic coast of the Americas. According to this author, there are thus socio-economic reasons behind the emergence of a Creole language, rather than simply the presence of a large population of African origin.  
In addition to these social reasons, local circumstances can also explain the absence of a Creole language. An example is in Cuba, where, according to Bernal (2008, pp. 66-68), several factors may have prevented the development of a Spanish-based Creole language. These include the great linguistic diversity of the slaves brought into the country, which prevented the use of an African tongue as a vehicular language. Another factor was the very high mortality rate among Africans, leading to a constant replacement of slaves, along with the intense migration of Spaniards, sometimes at a higher rate than the number of people entering the country from sub-Saharan Africa (and with a lower mortality rate).  
Miscegenation also played a part, as well as the fact that the black population never surpassed whites, as occurred on other islands in the Caribbean area. The Africans and their descendants learned to pronounce and speak Spanish among Cubans and Spaniards. These 'teachers', whose pronunciation and language use they inherited, had a low level of literacy. That explains why it is said that the African influence on Cuban Spanish did not shape the development of Spanish in Cuba, but undeniably strengthened the internal evolution of this variant.