Cuba

Basques of very different kinds passed through the history of Cuba: two men from Araba who stood on opposite sides of slavery, the soldier who closed the colonial era, an exile who opened a restaurant in Havana and a bishop born on the island to parents from Gipuzkoa.

Bishop Espada and the first public cemetery in Havana

Juan José Díaz de Espada y Fernández de Landa was born in Arroyabe (Araba) in 1756 and was bishop of Havana between 1802 and 1832. Juan Bosco Amores counts him among the Basques who have left the best memory in Cuba. His name is tied to the city’s first public cemetery outside the walls; he also promoted the Colegio Seminario de San Carlos and clashed with the oligarchy over his stance against slavery.¹

Julián de Zulueta, the slave trader

At the other extreme stands another man from Araba. Julián de Zulueta y Amondo, baptised in Anúcita in 1814, arrived in Cuba in 1832 “as one more poor emigrant”. He made an immense fortune from the slave trade and sugar, and Amores describes him as “probably the most renowned slave trader in Cuban colonial history”. He was a colonel, alderman, mayor and senator, and he died in Havana in 1878.¹ Luengo mentions him as one of the few figures of the Basque colony in Cuba that historians had studied.²

Ramón Blanco, the last captain general

Ramón Blanco Erenas (1833-1906), from Donostia-San Sebastián, was the last captain general of Cuba. In 1897-1898 he tried to introduce autonomous rule and to seek a negotiated way out with the supporters of independence.¹

A Basque restaurant in El Vedado

In 1954 the Centro Vasco restaurant opened in El Vedado, on the corner of 3rd and 4th streets. It was built by Juan Saizarbitoria, from Mutriku, an exile of the Spanish Civil War who had become a prosperous businessman, and he gave it a front imitating a Basque farmhouse and five large oil paintings by Teo Carrasco with Basque scenes. Pelota players were regulars and, according to euskalkultura.eus, Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra and a Fidel Castro who was still a university student all passed through it. The Revolution nationalised it in the sixties, but it went on working as a restaurant.¹²

A bishop whose parents came from Beasain

Emilio Aranguren Echeverría was born in Santa Clara, the son of parents who had emigrated from Beasain. He was bishop of Cienfuegos and secretary of the Conferencia Episcopal de Cuba (Cuban Episcopal Conference), and in 2005 he moved to the diocese of Holguín.³