Varadero, a small town rich in history
The first outline of the Varadero Peninsula is found on a map dating from 1540. When the Spanish arrived at that time, the aborigines lived in this region of Cuba. The conquerors were first interested in the site for these salt pans. Salt was produced in Varadero, famous in Europe for the fineness of these grains, from 1555 to 1931. The oldest of the salt lagoons is still visible between the Paradisus and Peninsula hotels, in what is now a protected natural site.
In 1883, the first wooden house appeared, built by residents of Cardenas (9km away), for “seaside” purposes. And in 1887 the village of Varadero was officially created to take advantage of the natural site as a vacation spot.
Never before had the Spanish really lived on the peninsula, despite organized economic activity for several centuries. In addition to salt, the place was used for beaching boats. They were deliberately immobilized to carry out maintenance thanks to the different levels of sand along the beach . Which still gives today all the characteristic beauty of Varadero, for the palette of blue tones that the sea reflects in this place, due to these sandbanks of different depths . We owe the name “Varadero” to this practice, the translation of which would be “place of stranding”.
The Americans land in Varadero
From the first moments of the American annexation of Cuba in 1900, the northern neighbors created a company to promote the Varadero site: Cuba Chatagua Ressort. Because, as we have seen, Varadero was only officially founded for its seaside attractions. At that time at the end of the 19th century, it was one of the rare places in the world where people bathed... in the open air, when the practice of the moment was to go into the water in small shelters built on the beaches for this purpose.
This “dissoluteness” attracted progressives, and this is how Varadero, promoted to the United States, saw the arrival some time later of businessmen looking for investments. Among them, Irénée Dupont de Nemours, who in 1926 rushed to buy (at 15 US cents per hectare!) more than half of the land making up the peninsula. Under the cover of the company he supposedly created for the cultivation of succulents, Henequeneras Peña d'Icacos SA, he carried out the best real estate transaction of the time, reselling little by little in plots and a hundredfold.
The same year he built his house which he named, inspired by a poem by Samuel Taylor, Mansion Xanadu, which would mean: “prodigious land”, a name actually chosen aptly. The architects Govante and Lavaroca, we also owe them the Capitol and the national library of Havana, created what constitutes, still today, a textbook case (of architecture), due to its atypical and nevertheless very successful style. for this residence which now serves as the Varadero Golf Club House.
But the best tourist development in Varadero was between the 30s and 40s and until 1950. Thanks to numerous American investors, notably Silbas, who created the Chamber of Commerce of the region, promoter among others of the Kawama hotel still used today, Varadero is becoming a favored American vacation destination.
The architectural heritage of Varadero
Walking around Varadero, you can still see many buildings from this prestigious era, during which, for example in 1950 during the international architectural competition, many candidates chose Varadero as the site to create their work. Among some buildings, now rehabilitated or transformed into tourist facilities, we note the hotels: Kawama, Los Delfines, L'Oasis (now destroyed), Pullman, Dos Mares and Internacional (now destroyed and rebuilt in a more contemporary version).
In fact, three styles clearly stand out among the constructions of Varadero before the Revolution: the wooden houses of the 20s and 30s, coming directly from the style of the bungalows of the southern United States. The best example being the old Varadero Museum (known in France as “La Maison Bleue” for having been highlighted in the TV film Terre Indigo).
Then, in the 30s and 40s, the houses were designed in a clever mix of stones, notably coral with its characteristic colors and roughness, and wood visible on the balconies, frames and building structures: example of the current pizzeria Castel Novo, the Lai Lai restaurant, the Varadero polyclinic (corner calle 60), or the Pullman and Dos Mares hotels.
Finally, from the 1950s, the introduction of glass appeared in the arrangement of openings, visible in particular in the gardens of Cuatro Palmas among the various villas such as the former summer residence of the dictator Batista, or the Oasis and Internacional (the latter two are now destroyed).
From this time, the same Batista gave new impetus to Varadero. This is the tourism area that is developing. He will build access roads, the famous Via Blanca (White Road) between Havana and the peninsula, and develop air connections. During these years the first hotels appeared outside what is considered the city of Varadero (like the Internacional Hotel - now destroyed and rebuilt). In 1956 Varadero was declared a national and international tourist center.
Varadero after the Revolution
After the triumph of the Revolution, Fidel Castro made the beaches public, arranged certain facilities according to his revolutionary needs, in particular facilitating access to hotels for the population, organized one of the centers of the literacy campaign, and even made available a villa for the rest of Russian cosmonauts returning to earth… (still visible in the gardens of the Sol Sirenas hotel). But it stopped, for a period, the development of tourism as an economy. The only construction dating from the 1980s was the Atabey and Siboney hotel, now Palma Real, an example of revolutionary Spartan architecture.
But history repeats itself, and the cessation of tourist development in Varadero was only momentary. Since 1990, the peninsula has regained its vocation as Cuba's leading tourist center.
The necessary evil, as they say in Cuba, for the economic survival of the country has become tourism and Varadero should become the figurehead of this new economy.
However, before being a sanitized seaside resort, Varadero was a city, certainly whose objective since its creation was the holiday resort, but with a soul, that is to say a population, an organization and classic political arrangements. Very different from the new Cuban seaside resorts organized from scratch, on deserted sites, the cayos (islets) like Largo, Santa Maria, Coco and other projects in progress.
During the golden years of the Revolution, Cubans dreamed of Varadero, like the French of Cannes, Biarritz or Saint Tropez. The site was synonymous with vacation, sun, relaxation. The wealthiest had a second home there, and earning themselves a few days in Varadero, in the form of stimulation from a political organization, as is often the case in Cuba, was the maximum reward, particularly for workers from the provinces. . At that time, restaurants, cabarets and places to relax guaranteed the liveliness of the busy town.
Today, even if we try to reduce it to a simple tourist center, Varadero is a living village. Most of its activity is of course focused on the operation of its hotels, the engine of the economy, but you can still discover the soul of a small town rich in history. Recreational activities, bars, restaurants, cabarets, cultural centers impose obvious resistance in the face of large hotels organized as “all-inclusive”, a regime encouraging visitors to remain cloistered for days, having everything available on site.
Source of the article: https://www.cubania.com/blog/cubania-2/post/varadero-une-petite-ville-riche-dhistoire-370