Tapered and without a roof, the snowball house suffers abandonment in Guanabacoa

Havana/The state of the Natal Casa de Bola de Snow, author of the most melancholic lyrics of Cuban music, gives to compose a bleak bolero. Located on the corner of Máximo Gómez and Versailles streets, in Guanabacoa, Havana, the house has become a grayish shell than the Municipal Museum, in charge of the property, watches up with suspicion.

The walls that mark the perimeter and several columns that support the structure of the portal, topped with floral ornaments that mimic the frames that remain in the windows remain standing. The roof has long collapsed. From the remains of the property the dimensions of a republican house that once occupied the entire corner of the street and now remains “tapey” to prevent undesiled tenants from being used.

Like the Cuban bolero It’s so difficultfor the Guanabacoa Museum, attending to the house and resusciting it has become an impossible mission. “There was a project to restore it, but it was nothing. In the end they upholled it, because people constantly entered to sleep or directly live, and that was the solution: seal it, ”he tells 14ymedio A museum worker.

In 2011, when a centenary of the birth of Bola was fulfilled, the Municipal Museum put a tarja commemorating the musician’s birthday, but shortly after he retired it.

As explained, the house belonged to the family of Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández – who attributed the ironic artistic name of snowball -, but the musician transferred his relatives to another home in the same municipality, located in the corner of the streets of the streets Nazareno and Maceo. “The descendants of his brother did not retain the house and swap it. It was for a time a quarter store where several families lived, ”explains the employee.

While people lived in the house, the museum could not restore it, but neither did it leave tenants to make large changes because the property is considered heritage. When he finally was empty – they gave another place to those who lived there – and the museum could “put a hand” without obstacles, then there were no resources or intentions to repair the house.

“There has been talk of restoration projects and even some came, but nothing is done. There are many sites in Guanabacoa Patrimonials with restoration projects presented, but the issue is that there is no money, ”says the worker. When the same Guanabacoa museum “needs repair”, the future of the house is clear: “It is going to be lost.”