La Victoria

A tribute to a love story as captivating as it is mysterious in light of these times. Artificial and mechanical roses, a garden statue with a face akin to the one honored, Art Deco designs dialoguing with other styles, the couple's initials in every room. Unique, unrepeatable spaces. Everything breathes the mutual and alienated devotion of a world not very accustomed to such expressions.

Faint memories in extinction. Jockeys galloping ghost horses, tracks turned into anything unrelated, people who once cheered and then carried that experience with them, stored in the mausoleum of their minds. Old photos seem to portray another place—it is never here. How many now know of its distant existence?

Fangio was indeed present at the race he was not allowed to participate in. Long before he set foot on national soil, the announcement of his visit ignited a film that never stopped running in the eyes of children. He circulated in his car, the fastest one, along the silhouette of the Malecón.

As in life as in death, the couple will have an eternal and shared stay. In the masterful Lalique gate, a replicated angel, one same soul replicated. The rose, that symbol of the couple, could not be missing.

The Alma Mater is like a saint. Symmetrical, hieratic, imposing. Crowning a legendary staircase. Both witnesses to so many stories, dreams, hopes, and also pain.

In that promised and unfulfilled best of all possible worlds, Tropicana continues to be that mystery of inaccessible glamour. It no longer preserves the legacy of the past, that musical and luminous rumble that expanded throughout the city with an aura of positive, almost cosmic vibrations. An oasis, an island within another island, a paradise under the stars.

Our elders remember those times with zeal. The air of the always longed-for Major Leagues was breathed, that mecca impossible to ignore. Baseball was shaped that way, it was always like that. And the Stadium del Cerro knew it, and behaved as such, that professional passport to its own entertainment, that cousin of Yankee Stadium. On any given day you could see Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle giving a boost to one of ours, or vice versa.

Work of the same architect as Tropicana. Very similar visual style. Another paradise by the sea? Swimmers, like the followers of the Gran Stadium del Cerro, could expect great surprises by day, under the imposing sun, or perhaps at night. The lights of large cruise ships could be seen passing slowly, promising many things, but especially adorning the eyes and igniting the imagination.

An imposing building in the historic center of Havana. A splendor of an era full of wonderful architectural examples. Art Deco is a beautiful luxury—so is the Bacardí. A unique piece of a cosmopolitan city in expansion, agile, filled with modern cars—new cars at that time.