[LINK] "Catalonian Influences in the Caribbean"

[rfmcdonald]

The Havana Times reproduces an interesting article examining Catalan influence in the Spanish Caribbean.

Even without meaning to highlight it, the opening of the cultural program “Catalonian Influences in the Caribbean” evoked the various periods in which Spain too was a country of emigrants.

For reasons of an economic, political or other nature, the richly endowed American possessions of the Spanish crown - or the newly independent republics, depending on the historical moment - once represented the dream of a better life for many Spaniards. Refugees of wars and dictatorships hoped they would find their second homeland in this new world.

With the aim of recovering and strengthening the cultural and emotional bonds between Catalonia and Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations, the program “Catalonian Influences in the Caribbean” was organized by the Casa América Cataluña, considered to be the first institution of its type in the world.

The very origin of that institution was based in nostalgia, because it was started by emigrants who returned to the peninsula after the loss of the former colonies - particularly the last two, Cuba and Puerto Rico. In Barcelona they first founded the Club Americano, in 1911, the predecessor of the Casa América Cataluña.

[. . .]

The Catalans came late, but they took very good advantage of their arrival. Around 1830, “Catalan emigration to Cuba began to convert into an economic, social and even political force of clear importance in national life,” contends writer and journalist Leonardo Padura in his article “La aventura americana” (The American adventure), originally published in the Cuban newspaper “Juventud Rebelde.”

“All economic strata seemed interested in those Spaniards who, from trade with the colony, provided the lungs for the air needed for Catalonia to make the leap to industrialization; at the same time they revived the mercantile life of the island,” noted the journalist.

In this way, Catalans practically directed trade from Cuba around 1850. Not only did they hand down into history famous names - such as Partagás (perhaps the best known Catalan connected to the tobacco industry), Facundo Bacardí (the father of Bacardí rum, whose legend endures even today), and Martí Torrens (whose fortune had a great deal to do with the profitable African slave trade) - but they also left us the legacy of today’s García Lorca Theater.

There were also Catalans recognized for their connection with other important areas of life - individuals like Mariano Cubí Soler, founder of the “Revista Bimestre de Cuba” magazine; and teacher Juan Olivella Salas, co-founder along with Cubí of the Buenavista school.

According to the article by Padura, “The economic surge of this emigration allowed them, by 1840, to even found what would become the first regional association of Spaniards in Cuba: La Sociedad de Beneficencia de Naturales de Cataluña. Its presidency would be passed along to the most noted individuals of this nationality, and the association would physically construct new institutions - first a hospital, where one could die in peace, and later a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Moreneta, where one could cry from their nostalgia.”

Go, read the article in its entirety.