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Eusebio Leal Spengler

«The Habano Clusters All the Excellences of Cuba’s Manufacturing»

World Heritage, some sort of huge museum of the colonial rule era whose main attraction is precisely its being living quarters full of neighbors, where people build on their daily lives and is possible to enjoy a broad cultural offer, Old Havana is the right place for those who get lured by the kind of stroll that combines sightseeing spots and the interaction with inhabitants and their stories.

It’s daybreak and life wakes up. A lovely scent of fresh coffee wafts outside the house windows and the voices of schoolchildren are overheard. The curious ticking of Radio Reloj – the only radio station in the world that broadcasts breaking news around the clock – seeps in. Men and women traipse through the refurbished buildings and others – quite rundown – that wait for the benefits of the restoration process led by the Office of the City Historian. Plazas, ancestral mansions, fancy restaurants, must-see museums, charming hotels and narrow colonial streets stretch across three square kilometers. Yet all this much won’t be that attractive if it weren’t for a community of highly-communicative and outspoken people that conquers the love and tenderness of all visitors. Old Havana is home to superb hotels housed in former palaces. Among many of them – suitable for Habano lovers – the Conde de Villa Nueva Hostel, in Mercaderes Street, is a standout. The magnificent in-house Vuelta Abajo Restaurant and other spaces inspired in the fascinating world of Cuban tobacco and cigars – let alone a well-stocked Habano store equipped with its own lockers for regular customers, walk-in humidor and tasting bar – are some of its amazing conveniences. Step by step the world so much recommended in guidebooks shows up before your eyes: the Arms Square, the Cathedral, the Old Square, St. Francis of Assisi, immaculate streets with rows of balconies and painted window panes on both sides, former palaces that now harbor social institutions and excellent museums, like the ones dedicated to chocolate and tobacco, that pay tribute to two of the products Europeans chanced upon in the lands of the New World. By the time the sun is beginning to beat down, many cafés and small bistros are already open. It’s really worthwhile to stop by and listen to good Cuban music performed live with lutes, bongos and maracas. Even though La Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita continue to be the most famous restaurants, others specialized in Arabic, Chinese, Andalusian, Cuban or Italian cuisine are similarly good. A handful of them dish out very tempting Spartan essences and varied menus. Their offerings are much cheaper, with more flexible opening hours, especially thought out for those who love getting off the beaten track designed for massive tourism. The entire historic center is jam-packed with little surprises: classic ballet schools where kids are taught with the doors wide open, house-workshops in which celebrated painters can create, bookstores whose shelves are teeming with rare volumes at very bargaining prices, lovely inner patios that ooze out peace everywhere, stilt dancers dressed in motley rags that saunter up and down the streets to the beat of their own music, or just those picturesque characters wearing clothes from ancient times that suddenly show up on any corner as if they would have hopped off a time machine. These and many other details and the charms are what ancient Old Havana is all about, that huge place full of arches, churches, palaces, squares outfitted with fountains, large quarters full of neighbors that range from physicians to simple workers. They all help give this urban sector a new lease on life, a neighborhood still watched by former fortresses like La Punta, La Fuerza, El Morro and La Cabaña. But city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler has put it even better: “Havana is a very large space in the memory of Cuba, of the Americas and the world. So many things have happened in this city! Its urbanism is so beautiful, so well designed for a city that overlooks the sea! This is also a city that, thanks to a number of random occurrences, has held on to its styles and its memories. “From the bottom of the soul a voice cries out: nothing compares to Havana. Havana is a frame of mind, a succession of surprises and nostalgias. What’s more, it’s where everything seems to be standing still and shrouded with a delicate and thin veil, torn by the humor and eventful life of those who live in it. For this city with a female name, there’ll be no demise or oblivion because poetry lives in it, the promise of eternity that has made sense for each and every generation that shaped its urban spaces, its monuments, its streets. “We don’t give a nostalgic glance of the city, but one that is active and seeks to preserve the features that define its identity. Because Havana is not an elderly lady that wears wigs and puts makeup on her face. Havana shows off the dignity of her years, the beauty of the times, the charm and pride of herself.” It feels so good to read these beautiful words, so much love thrown into prose, so much dedication and gentleness in this great eloquent Havana native. My colleagues and I agree he’ll surely be one of the most captivating attendees to the 14th Habano Festival in this edition that also coincides with the 520th anniversary of Europeans’ encounter with Cuba’s tobacco. Caught up in a web of duties and commitments, Eusebio spared a few minutes from his tight schedule to meet with us some weeks ago. It was a Monday early in the morning – before 8:00 am at the Habana Radio station in La Lonja del Comercio. Those of us who have admired and followed him know too well of his delicacy. But we also know that time is one of his most cherished treasures. We went straight to the topic we wanted to deal with him for we didn’t want to take a single minute away from him: a succinct comment by the wise historian on the Habano. “The Habano cigar showcases a number of major cultural elements. First of all – as you say – the fact of the encounter (between Europeans and tobacco in Cuba); they saw different men carrying some sort of burning stick in their mouths. To the best of my recollection, that’s what Christopher Columbus wrote in his diary. “But the most interesting thing, from my viewpoint, is that from that moment onward a series of developments and happenings unraveled, occurrences that started conquering a new market for the Habano and for its essence, let alone accruing pleasure and liking in another world, which as a matter of fact was not ours, but theirs. That other world had such an opportunity because Habanos are smoked – and I make this point clear. Different leaves and different productions that eventually made tobacco achieve a particular significance in Cuba. “In the following centuries, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, tobacco plantations were grown and harvested. After that, a number of domestic developments, like the tobacco ban or the rising prices imposed by the Bourbon monarchs, forged a very important alliance between tobacco and destination Cuba. “Quite coincidentally with the magazine’s name, I believe the Habano cigar – a denomination of origin – has a very peculiar and particular merit for having clustered all the excellences of Cuba’s manufacturing. I mean, it gathers all the excellence of the Cuban production: in the harvest, in the hand-rolling process, in the presentation, in the branding of the boxes. A very beautiful vision of Cuba is present in all of the above. “And to top it all off, there’s the encounter between tobacco and Cuba’s freedom hopes, focused on the period in which Jose Marti, transformed in the Apostle of the Independence, turned precisely the Cuban cigar factories on the U.S. south coast into a dais for his ardent rhetoric and countless lectures.”