Santa Clara

Santa Clara was founded on 15 July 1689 by 175 people. Most belonged to two large families who already owned land at the site; the rest were families from San Juan de los Remedios, near the coast, who had chosen to move inland rather than live under constant pirate attack. By tradition the founders heard mass under a tamarind tree on the hill now called Loma del Carmen. The settlement went through several names — Cayo Nuevo, Villa Nueva de Santa Clara, Villa Clara — before settling on Santa Clara, and it was laid out on a regular Spanish grid around a Plaza Mayor, today's Parque Vidal.

Lying almost at the centre of the island, the town became a stop for travellers between Havana and the east and a transport hub, and by the 19th century it had outgrown Remedios and become capital of Las Villas province. Its great benefactor was Marta Abreu, who with her husband supported the rebels in the war of independence and paid for the Teatro La Caridad, schools for poor children, a fire station and the railway station. In 1923 the old parish church in the main square was demolished to enlarge the plaza, a decision still criticised.

In late December 1958 rebel columns under Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos attacked the city. On 29 December Guevara's men derailed an armoured train sent from Havana, and the city was captured; Batista fled Cuba within hours. In 1977 Santa Clara became capital of the new Villa Clara province, and in 1997 Guevara's remains, found in Bolivia, were buried in the memorial on the city's western side.

Santa Clara is best known for the battle of 1958, which is remembered in its memorials, from the armoured train to the mausoleum. Yet its everyday character is that of a provincial university town. The Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, founded in 1952, and a medical university founded in 1966 bring in students from across central Cuba.

The best-known cultural venue is El Mejunje, which Ramón Silverio began in 1985 as a gathering of bohemians and intellectuals in the ruins of an old hotel beside the cathedral. It grew into an LGBT cultural centre open to everyone, with a theatre, a café, an art gallery, concerts from rock to Cuban folk music and a Saturday-night disco, and it has run campaigns on HIV prevention and against homophobia. The Teatro La Caridad is one of the colonial theatres that still stands on the island.

The Parque Vidal has long been the centre of social life. An older custom, now rarely practised, had young women walking around the inner path of the square while young men walked the outer one. The city has produced the pianist Rubén González, the drummer Dafnis Prieto and several major-league baseball players, and baseball is followed closely. In December the towns to the north-east, Remedios and Caibarién, hold the parrandas, rival neighbourhood festivals with floats, lanterns and fireworks.

The municipality of Santa Clara had about 246,000 people in 2022, making it the fifth-largest city in Cuba. It is the capital of Villa Clara province and its administrative, university and medical centre, and it lies where the central highway, the motorway and the main railway meet, so much of the island's road and rail traffic passes through.

The city is divided into wards, from the old centre around the Parque Vidal and residential districts such as Condado and Vigía to semi-rural areas on the edge, where farmland begins. Pedicabs and horse carriages share the streets with old cars and buses. The Parque Vidal, a block-sized square of benches and monuments, is where people meet in the afternoons.

Daily life follows the national pattern of low state wages, rationing, queues and long power cuts. Island-wide blackouts have recurred through 2026, and since the United States began blocking fuel shipments to Cuba early in the year, shortages of fuel, food and medicine have deepened. Like the rest of the centre, Santa Clara has lost many young people to emigration in recent years, and many families depend on money sent from relatives abroad.

Santa Clara eats the national staples: rice and black beans, cooked together as moros y cristianos or congrí, roast or fried pork, chicken, yuca with mojo, a garlic and citrus dressing, and plantain served as crisp tostones or sweet maduros. In the countryside of central Cuba, pork roasted slowly over an open fire or in a pit is the dish for celebrations.

Most visitors eat at their casa particular, where breakfast and dinner are often cooked by the family, or in paladares, the private restaurants around the Parque Vidal. Peso-priced state cafeterias serve simpler plates of pork, chicken and salad. Ingredients depend on what is available, and the menu can be short when shortages bite.

The boulevard, the main street of the centre, is the place for a drink: cafés and cantinas there serve Cristal beer, rum and small cups of strong, sweet espresso, the cafecito that punctuates the Cuban day. On the plains outside the city, sugar cane gives guarapo, fresh cane juice, and tobacco is processed in the province.