CubaPLUS Magazine

At this point in time and space, a Cuban city that is respected must have at least one Boulevard, that is, a central and populous thoroughfare basically dedicated to pedestrian circulation, made up of several blocks lined up linearly and generally located in a very commercial and busy area.

Although boulevards flourished in Europe, especially since the 19th century, as wide streets or heavily tree-lined promenades, meeting points for artists, dandy and bohemian people, the current Cuban boulevards -a word Spanishized in the singular as boulevard from the foreign word boulevard. They display polished granite floors and are generally full of shops, jewelry stores, pharmacies, bookstores, museums, restaurants and cafes, and even art galleries.

Like the European originals of yesteryear, they coincide with the objective of providing relaxation and recreation, with the addition of intense commercial activity, not continually artistic. Far from what might be expected, in the years of economic severity of the so-called special period and the bloody rigors of the blockade, since the 1990s throughout the national territory there has been a fondness for building boulevards in almost all important cities and large towns.

They are made from adaptations, reforms and renewals of an already existing infrastructure in generally very famous streets for a long time. The objective is to turn these prestigious streets into safe places for the freest and most carefree pedestrian walk, as we have already said, and simultaneously provide them with an attractive and beautiful design, a practice in which we are not pioneers either.

The first and most famous boulevards, as is to be expected, are found in Havana and arose before the so-called passion for boulevards that beats nationally today. Rest assured that a city that still does not have a boulevard in Cuba will have one sooner rather than later because it is like a hallmark of the modern structure of its community.

Among the most notorious is the long, narrow, and super-crowded boulevard of Calle Obispo, which starts almost on one of the flanks of the famous Plaza de Armas, starting from the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales and ends near the famous Floridita bar, near from Paseo del Prado, full of life, shops and a lot of Cubanness lavished on superb architecture, music, and multiple cultural manifestations.

San Rafael Boulevard, from Paseo del Prado to Calle Galiano, covers the first five blocks of a famous commercial artery of the Cuban capital, since the 1930s. We will also mention among the already numerous boulevards in Cuba that of the beautiful city of Camagüey, in the center of Cuba, inaugurated in 2018 as part of a much broader socio-cultural complex of that city with a rich heritage.

In addition, the boulevard of the Pearl of the South, the port city of Cienfuegos, is striking, a road that has had several names and is located in the only city founded by the French in the country. Finally, another very attractive beach was added to the most famous simultaneously the nation, that of Varadero, the Blue Beach par excellence.