We were met at the airport and taken to the VIP lounge, where rum and cola awaited us at eight in the morning. The warm welcome and the rum made the long arrival easier; without the agency, we were told, the queue might have taken three hours. Our guide Roberto has worked in tourism for thirty years. He is fifty-five but looks closer to thirty-five, and immediately wins us over.
We stayed at Hotel Sevilla, once associated with the American mafia before the revolution. Its location is excellent. Across the road stands Cuba’s largest ballet school, the National Ballet School, in a building that looks badly in need of repair. The hotel and its rooms seem frozen in the 1950s. The view is magnificent, but there is no hot water and the food is disappointing.
Until the seventeenth century Havana was enclosed by walls and entered through six gates. They were closed every evening at nine and reopened at five in the morning. We went to the fortifications for the evening cannon ceremony.
Havana—La Habana in Spanish, formally San Cristóbal de La Habana—is Cuba’s capital. With about 2.2 million residents, it is the largest city in both Cuba and the Caribbean. Cigars, sugar cane and maize have long been central to its economy.
Spanish influence is visible everywhere. Many houses seem to have remained in the colonial era. If the rubbish, persistent begging and crumbling façades disappeared, and the buildings received paint and repairs, the city would be extraordinarily beautiful. As far as I can see, it still has some way to go.
Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba on 28 October 1492. On a later voyage he introduced sugar cane, changing the fate of both the island and the wider region. Cuba remained a Spanish possession for centuries. After the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, the island was briefly administered by the United States before gaining formal independence in 1902, although American influence continued to shape it.
Havana was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1515 near present-day Batabanó, then moved to its current location in 1519. Its strategic harbour made it an important commercial and military port. Treasure-laden Spanish ships attracted pirates: the city was burned in 1538 and raided again in 1553 and 1555.
Havana became the capital of colonial Cuba in 1607. Britain captured the supposedly impregnable harbour in 1762, then returned the city to Spain in exchange for Florida. Spain rebuilt it as one of the Caribbean’s best-defended cities, with walls, six gates and a star-shaped fortress protecting the narrow entrance to its vast natural harbour.
During Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s, Havana became a playground for American visitors. Mafia figures established hotels, casinos and nightclubs; Hotel Nacional, where we also shopped, was among the most famous. After the 1959 revolution, the owners of many casinos and clubs left the country. Revolutionary forces entered Havana on 3 January 1959.
After resting and touring the city, we visited the Granma, the vessel that became a symbol of the revolution. Fidel Castro sailed from Mexico with eighty-two companions and never left Cuba again. His brother Raúl later succeeded him and introduced constitutional changes, including five-year elections and a two-term presidential limit. Currency reform and limited private enterprise followed, while China became an important ally. US dollars and euros circulate widely; one dollar may be exchanged informally for two or three hundred pesos.