Manzanillo
A Gulf Port With A Moorish Bandstand Unique In Cuba, The Home Of The Cuban Street Organ, And Ten Kilometres From The Estate Where Cespedes Freed His Slaves And Began The Independence War · Manzanillo, Granma
Manzanillo is a working port on the Gulf of Guacanayabo that almost no visitor reaches, and it has two things worth the detour. In the middle of Parque Cespedes stands the Glorieta Morisca, a bandstand of 1924 covered in Moorish plasterwork copied from the Alhambra, with the square around it detailed to match - there is nothing else like it in Cuba. And this city is the home of the Cuban street organ: the great mechanical organs that play at eastern Cuban festivals were built here by the Borbolla family, and they are still played. Ten kilometres south is La Demajagua, the sugar estate where Carlos Manuel de Cespedes freed the people he had enslaved on 10 October 1868 and declared war on Spain, with the mill bell he rang that morning preserved on the site. Almost nobody comes to any of it. Manzanillo is a working port with no tourism, prices among the lowest in the country, and a malecon that faces west over the gulf - and it is the last town of any size before the road west to Desembarco del Granma.
Parque Cespedes, Manzanillo, Granma, Manzanillo, Granma, Cuba
The malecon and Parque Cespedes are open at all times. LA DEMAJAGUA, ten kilometres south, keeps daytime hours with a weekly closing day and a small charge. The municipal museum and the Casa de la Trova keep their own hours. STREET ORGANS are played at festivals and on some weekends rather than to a schedule - ask locally. Daily power cuts affect everything.