CubaPLUS Magazine

Cubans have always identified spring as a symbol of youth and the rebirth of life, although a good part of the population rightly maintains that the archipelago enjoys an eternal summer, and the planet is going in that direction, spurred on by the effects of  climate change.

It is a sentimental and cultural bond, also based on the fact that  growth cycles of the species in its splendid forest are internally dictated by it. We arrive at this March 20, marked for the beginning of the boreal spring (northern hemisphere), one of the two equinoxes of the year, ruling until June 21, 2023, without the rites or festivals of ancestral origin that in other cultures are celebrated, because it is a very defined season.

But its advent is nothing to ignore. As in any corner of the northern hemisphere, we await the arrival of the day in which the day will have the same duration as the night, all over the planet, thinking that it also has to do with us in a more or less notable way. We are part of the world, right? In short, if it were not for the excess heat that buys us more time every day, one could also think that Cuba is an eternal spring due to the perennial greenery of its forests, despite the strong periods of drought that threaten its savannahs, the productivity of agricultural fields and the flow of its aquifers.

As in other places, for Cuban culture, spring is the beginning, childhood and youth, and we like to transfer this characteristic of initiation to events such as Theatrical Spring, from the province of Granma, Spring of stories, from Cuban radio, and to the thousand and one invocations that come our way here and there these days.

Our humid tropical climate, with a strong trend to increase the temperature and under the effects of seasonal shifts that global warming stirs up on the planet, is more than assumed, together with the knowledge that was previously taught in primary classes about the existence here of a kind of two stages: the so-called dry season and the rainy season.

No more. But we never stop singing to spring, because we are very well interconnected with the world and its bio-physical processes and we know it. And also, due to our cultural heritage: for centuries we have been cosmopolitan and open and we love to dream with touches of fantasies. Of all, a bit.