Galiano and a new attempt to recover his beauty with money from Italy

Havana/The newer walls newly painted and some gums such as banks make up the last attempt to return beauty to the Galiano Street In Centro Habana, one of the most important commercial routes of the Cuban capital. In the corner that make up the so -called Italian Avenue and Malecon, a park where there was a collapse before.

On one of the peculiar seats, a surrounding neighbor reviewed his mobile on Friday, connected to the park’s Wi -Fi network. The renovation of the square was announced by the Cuban headquarters of the Italian development cooperation agency. The entity explained, in its Facebook account, that “this intervention is part of a comprehensive strategy to reactivate spaces with potential, combining technical solutions, citizen participation and collaborative design.”

In an area hard by the crisis, without the tourist attractions of the historic center or the most modern infrastructure of El Vedado, the corner of Galiano and Malecon is inserted in a neighborhood where the housing deterioration, poverty and the lack of recreational options mark the day -to -day life of its residents. Desire to have a space for children to play and couples get over, a dozen neighbors approached the days after its inauguration.

A game of Pon, painted on the concrete floor, attracted some infants who quickly detected that the numbering of the popular Diveriment only reached number six, instead of the traditional nine or ten that must crown the jumps and joys. A few meters away, spring sculpture, by Cuban artist Rafael Miranda San Juan, seemed to observe with peculiar calm the new image of the square.

However, like any public works that has been inaugurated in this half century in Cuba, the emblematic corner also shows parts where the “intervention” has not ended. An electric cable that stands out on the floor and some holes that appear from the wall give the work a certain touch of “still under construction”, such as those sensationalist news that announce that there will be new details later.

“It’s pretty, at least it’s a place to sit and enjoy the sea breeze,” he told 14ymedio A man who crossed from the portals of the near Hotel Deauville to occupy one of the tires turned into banks. “It is not bad and it is a place that is rescued for people. But right here, on the side of that wall there is a collapse, I think it should have a little more protection this here.”

No retouching seems to be able to change that face of the street although money from Italy has tried several arrangements

In the hands of the Mass Construction team, “cleaning work, surface leveling and improvements in the basic infrastructure, including sanitary drainage and preparation of the land for the installation of luminaires and urban furniture” were carried out, said the Italian agency. The green color of the wall that serves as a limit gives way, on the other side, to a building shell from which only rusty beams and rubble remain.

Of course, the contrast between the renewed park and its surroundings is not as abysmal as the difference between luxury hotels in old Havana and the nearby quarters about to collapse. The corner of Galiano and Malecón has a modest, improvised and emergency touch that is integrated with a neighborhood in which state neglect and lack of investments has led its neighbors to fix them as they can.

This resistance has made Italy Avenue a combined of old buildings where barbecues and intermediate partitions have allowed to live together large families, portals transformed into points of sale of informal merchants and, at the intersection of the quotes, the mountains of garbage adding their smells and their dangers. No retouching seems to be able to change that face of the street although the money from Italy has tried several arrangements.

At the end of 2019, Galiano’s nights illuminated with a project that reproduced the Milky Way Constellationswith its more than 10 panels and light spheres. The lights were given by the Italian city of Turin to the Cuban capital on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of its foundation. For weeks, it became a practice to approach the avenue after the sun hid and take some photos with the creations of the Luci d’Artista project, of the stage Carmelo Giammello. But the “stars” gradually went out and the galaxy is left left.

Something similar happened with the Christmas pine sown in 2022 in the FE Park of the Valley, just in the corner that Galiano and San Rafael form. The tree, which December was filled with lights – it was the first public end of the year that Cubans saw in six decades -, it quickly turned on, with the dry leaves and the fallen branches. The official press then clarified that The pine It was not a Christmas sign but a very socialist “Tree of Friendship” between the island and the European country.

The new work financed by Italy in the square near the sea could be more resistant than the branches of a transplanted tree or the electric lights that simulate constellations. Time and use will say it.