Cienfuegos

Before the Spanish arrived, the shores of the bay belonged to the chiefdom of Jagua. In the 1740s the Spanish built the Castillo de Jagua at the bay's narrow entrance against pirates, but no town followed for decades. On 22 April 1819 French settlers from Bordeaux and Louisiana, led by Louis de Clouet, founded Fernandina de Jagua on the bay. It became a town in 1829, renamed after José Cienfuegos, Captain General of Cuba, and a city in 1880; street names such as Bouyón, D'Clouet and Gacel still recall the founders.

Fertile land and a fine harbour on the trade routes made the late-comer rich, and sugar was shipped from its port. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries Spanish immigrants, mostly Catalans and Asturians, made fortunes in business and paid for many of the buildings that still define the city, among them the Palacio de Valle. On 11 May 1898, during the Spanish–American War, American marines fought Spanish defenders near the city while trying to cut its underwater cables.

In September 1957 the city rose against Batista and was bombed in reprisal. After the revolution it became a key industrial centre, with an oil refinery, a cement works and the Juraguá nuclear plant, abandoned unfinished after Soviet aid ended. In 1969 and 1970 visits by Soviet naval vessels drew American attention. Hurricane Dennis struck nearby in 2005, the same year UNESCO listed the historic centre as the best surviving example of early 19th-century Spanish urban planning.

Cienfuegos calls itself the Pearl of the South and is proud of being the only Cuban city founded by the French. Its centre is a showcase of neoclassical buildings — six from 1819–50, 327 from the later 19th century and more than a thousand from the 20th — on wide, straight streets, built by Cuban, Italian and Spanish architects.

Music runs deep. Benny Moré, the great singer and bandleader known as El Bárbaro del Ritmo, was born at Santa Isabel de las Lajas in the province, and one of his songs is simply called "Cienfuegos". The Orquesta Aragón came from the city. The Tomás Terry Theatre, opened in 1890 as one of the great theatres of colonial Cuba, has hosted Enrico Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Anna Pavlova and Alicia Alonso.

Baseball is followed closely: the Cienfuegos Elefantes have played in the Cuban National Series since 1977–78, with their best finish third in 2010–11. Evenings are spent outdoors, on the boulevard, around the park and on the Malecón, where people gather along the sea wall to talk as the sun goes down over the bay.

About 178,000 people lived in Cienfuegos in 2022. It is a provincial capital, a university city and one of Cuba's chief seaports, handling sugar, coffee and tobacco. Since the late 1960s it has also been an industrial city of factories and power plants, with an oil refinery and a cement works around the bay; across the water, the workers' town of Ciudad Nuclear is still lived in, many of its buildings left half-finished.

Most people live in the grid of streets around the centre and in the newer districts beyond, and Punta Gorda remains a quiet residential peninsula of older villas. Horse-drawn carts serve as local buses along the Prado, and small peso cafeterias, pizza stalls and juice sellers cater to local customers.

Daily life follows the national pattern of low state wages, rationing, queues and long power cuts, with water shortages too, and the province, like the rest of the centre, has lost many young people to emigration. Tourism brings foreign currency to the casas, paladares and drivers, though far fewer visitors stay here than in Trinidad.

Cienfuegos eats the national staples — rice and beans, pork, chicken, yuca and plantain — and, being on the coast, fish and shrimp. Sugar cane is the chief crop around the city, and local farmers also grow coffee.

Everyday eating happens at stalls and cafeterias, especially along the Paseo del Prado, with its pizza stalls, ice-cream shops and juice sellers. Café bombón, coffee made with condensed milk, is served in the city's cafés. Visitors eat mainly in casas particulares, which cook dinner for guests, and in the city's private paladares. Shortages shape every kitchen in the city, so menus in paladares, cafeterias and casas alike change with whatever ingredients can be found, and meals are usually paid for in cash.

For a sense of the city's old wealth, the Palacio de Valle on Punta Gorda has a restaurant inside the villa, and the cafés around Parque José Martí, including one inside the Tomás Terry Theatre, are the classic places for coffee or a mojito between sights.