Varadero

The peninsula takes its name from its first use as a dry dock — varadero in Spanish — and its salt works supplied much of Spain's fleet in Latin America from 1587 until they closed in 1961. The town itself dates from 5 December 1887, when ten families from Cárdenas received permission to build holiday homes on the sand between today's 42nd and 48th Streets.

Tourism grew in the early 1930s, when the American millionaire Irénée du Pont built his estate on the peninsula, and Varadero became a resort for wealthy Cubans and Americans. After the 1959 revolution many of the mansions were expropriated and turned into museums, and the new government promoted the beach as a place for Cubans of all classes: the Park of the 8000 Cubicles in the centre of town, where bathers could leave belongings and hire swimsuits, hosted concerts, festivals and sporting events, and an International Carnival began in the 1980s.

The 1990s brought a new building campaign of large four- and five-star hotels, many run with foreign companies, and Varadero became the centre of the state's drive for foreign tourism after the Special Period. The central park, the cinema and other meeting places closed as tourism became centred on all-inclusive hotels, and the carnival ended. A record 1.7 million foreign tourists visited in 2017; since then the national crisis, and the fuel shortages of 2026, have cut visitor numbers to Cuba steeply.

Varadero has little of the music and Afro-Cuban tradition of the rest of Matanzas Province: most visitors see Cuban culture as hotel shows, although the old part of the town has local homes, a church and a museum. Parque Josone, in the middle of town, gives its name to a world music festival held every June, and a gourmet food festival runs each year between April and June.

The resort is shaped by its visitors, mainly Canadians and Europeans, and Varadero is home to one of Canada's two consulates in Cuba. Work in the hotels, with access to tips in foreign currency, is among the most valued jobs in the country, and many staff come from Cárdenas and Matanzas. Since the 1990s the local population has grown with people arriving from other parts of Cuba, some in key positions in the tourism economy.

For culture beyond the beach, visitors go west to Matanzas, the city of bridges and poets where danzón was first performed and rumba is a point of fierce local pride, or to Cárdenas, where the Cuban flag was first raised.

The municipality of Varadero had about 20,000 people in 2007, around 7,000 of them on the Hicacos Peninsula and the rest in the localities of Santa Marta and Boca de Camarioca. In 2010 the municipality was abolished and merged back into Cárdenas. Life on the peninsula divides between the old village of numbered streets in the west, where residents live among casas particulares and small restaurants, and the long hotel strip to the east.

Tourism is the whole economy: hotels, many operated with Spanish and Canadian companies, marinas, restaurants, taxis and excursions. Oil fields along the north coast between Havana and Matanzas produce heavy crude, and the plains of the province grow citrus, vegetables and cattle feed, but in Varadero almost everyone depends on visitors.

Outside the hotels, daily life follows the national pattern of shortages, blackouts and queues, and visitor numbers to Cuba have fallen steeply since the fuel crisis of 2026. Many young people from the province have emigrated.

Most visitors eat at hotel buffets aimed at international tastes, so Cuban cooking is better found in the paladares of the old Varadero grid and in Matanzas, where pork and congrí — rice cooked with beans — appear on menus. The staples are rice and black beans, roast or fried pork, chicken and fried plantain, both savoury tostones and sweet maduros, with fish and seafood along the coast.

Rum is part of the resort's identity. Cárdenas, at the neck of the peninsula, is where the Arechabala family's distillery created the Havana Club brand in 1934, and rum from the region's sugar cane goes into the mojitos and Cuba Libres served in Varadero's bars. Guarapo, freshly pressed sugar-cane juice, is sold at roadside stands in the cane country inland.

Cárdenas is also known for cangrejos, blue crabs. Casabe, a flat cassava bread with Taíno roots, is still made in parts of the province's countryside, and strong, sweet coffee, cafecito, punctuates the day in the old town as across Cuba.