Pinar del Río

Long before the Spanish came, the far west of Cuba was home to the Guanahatabey, nomadic people who lived in caves and drew most of their living from the sea, and to Taíno communities further east. After the conquest the Spanish left the rugged west largely alone, and it developed slowly once Canary Islanders began arriving in the late 1500s. These settlers became the tobacco farmers of the region, and the area, at first called Nueva Filipina, was renamed Pinar del Río in 1778, supposedly for the pine forests along the Río Guama.

Tobacco plantations and cattle ranches spread across the rich soil, and by the middle of the 19th century, when Europe had taken to the cigar, the region flourished. The Vuelta Abajo district around the city became famous for the finest cigar leaf, the town was founded on its present site on 10 September 1867, and in 1893 the railway was extended to carry the crop to market. Pinar del Río came to be known as the Mecca of tobacco.

In 1878, when Cuba was divided into six provinces, the town became the capital of the westernmost, and it has remained a provincial capital ever since. In 1962 Soviet missile sites in Pinar del Río Province were at the centre of the missile crisis. Hurricane Ian caused severe damage across the province in 2022, and the city has since shared in the national crisis of fuel shortages and blackouts.

The countryside around Pinar del Río is guajiro land, and the word for the rural farmer — said to mean 'one of us' — is worn with pride. Farming families of the Vuelta Abajo pass down the craft of growing, curing and sorting tobacco leaf, and many descend from Canary Island settlers. The punto guajiro, sung improvised verses in ten-line décimas, belongs to this rural culture, and cockfighting and rodeos are part of country life.

Baseball is the passion of the city. The provincial team, nicknamed the Vegueros — the tobacco growers — was founded in 1969 and is one of the most successful in the Cuban National Series, with ten championships; in 2015 it won the Caribbean Series, the first Cuban team to do so since 1960. The Hall of Famer Tony Oliva, who starred for the Minnesota Twins, came from the province.

The city has a university, founded in 1972, a historic theatre and a cathedral, and its centre of colonnaded streets has a provincial, unhurried feel. Unlike Viñales to the north, Pinar del Río is not a tourist town, and visitors share its streets with locals going about their business.

The municipality of Pinar del Río had about 191,000 people in 2022, making it one of the larger cities in Cuba, with most of them living in the city itself and the rest in the surrounding countryside and villages. The municipality borders Viñales, San Luis, San Juan y Martínez and Consolación del Sur.

The city lies in a major tobacco-growing area and is a centre of the cigar industry. Provincial government, the university, health services and commerce employ many others, and farming dominates the countryside around, where the carabao, the water buffalo, is the main working animal.

Daily life follows the national pattern: long blackouts, queues for bread and fuel, erratic water supply and high prices at private shops, with remittances from relatives abroad keeping many households going. Emigration has left many families divided. The Carretera Central highway, the A4 motorway and the railway to Havana link the city with the capital, and the farms of the province send their produce along them.

Food in Pinar del Río is the Cuban staple repertoire of the countryside: roast pork for celebrations, rice and black beans cooked together as moros y cristianos or congrí, root vegetables such as yuca with mojo, a garlic-citrus dressing, and fried plantain, both savoury tostones and sweet maduros. Fruit and vegetables come from the farms around the city, though supplies depend on what the shortages allow.

The province's own drink is guayabita del Pinar, a drink made since 1892 with a small guava grown in the mountains of Pinar del Río. Rum from Cuba's sugar cane fills the glasses at celebrations, and strong, sweet coffee, cafecito, punctuates the day.

Tobacco, though not a food, is the city's most famous product: leaf from the Vuelta Abajo goes into many of Cuba's best-known cigars, and the city is a centre of the cigar industry. State cafeterias sell cheap sandwiches and pizza, and a growing number of small private restaurants serve local diners and the occasional visitor.