CDMX, Mexico.- Although it may seem incredible, especially due to the high temperatures of the Caribbean, in Cuba we had two ice rinks before everything changed in 1959
Where were they located? Although there is not much information about it, the texts consulted agree that there was one in the missing Palacio de los Deportes, built in 1944 in Vedado, just in front of the Riviera Hotel. There they placed it in the center of the building.
The other track was inaugurated some time later, in the Blanquita theater —now Karl Marx. In the Blanquita the rotting was to remove the windows or part of them to install it.
Both were tracks open to the public, who bought their ticket to use them.
About Blanquita, as a curious fact he published the Spanish newspaper El País that the Havana theater became the largest in the world at the time of its inauguration (1950) with 6,500 seats, a cafeteria for 200 diners and obviously the ice skating rink.
On the other track Explain the journalist expert on historical issues Ciro Bianachi that the North American skater Sonja Heine made her presentations at the Palacio de los Deportes. “It was something fabulous. Those who saw it still remember it with admiration”.
The area of the Havana Malecón and the track that they installed there, according to theto BBC, It also served to train an ice hockey team called “El Tropical”, which lasted just one season.
After 1959, with the new government in power, these spaces disappeared. It was not until 2015 that Havana once again had a skating rinkalthough it was only briefly.
During the XII Havana Biennial. Between Belascoaín and Malecón thanks to the New York artist Duke Riley, they inaugurated a new track.
The space was made with sheets of a material that has the same characteristics as ice, but does not melt in the heat.
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