Coppelia, one of the many symbols of the utopian dreams that the Cuban Revolution undertook –in this case producing more and better flavors than the United States–, is closed to the public this Tuesday.
It is not for remodeling, as it happened in 2019nor for sanitary measures, as it was for months in the covid pandemic – when, in fact, they did sell take-out at their external counter – but simply and simply because there is no ice cream.
The employees responded clearly to customers who were surprised that the establishment had not begun to serve the public at its usual ten in the morning. “There is no, there is no ice cream.”
The panorama of the ice cream parlor, at one time characterized by the very long queues that had to be endured before entering under the shadow of its concrete roofs, was bleak. Lights off, chairs collected on the terraces, silence.
This Tuesday, the outside window was only open for a while, to sell a strange peach ice cream, which seemed without milk
Traditionally called the “Ice Cream Cathedral” in Cuba, Coppelia was inaugurated in 1966 and, like so many things during that time, lived a brief splendor. It soon began to languish, until the crisis of the Special Period, when the quantity and quality of its supply drastically dropped. However, even those terrible 90s did not end the ice cream parlor. On the contrary, being one of the few that still worked, the influx was enormous, and, once the circulation of the dollar was allowed, it was common to see foreigners enter with their currencies without having to wait.
Its remodeling almost four years ago aroused much expectation, but it could not stop the decline of the place that, with the Ordering Task, at the beginning of 2021, suffered another blow: prices rose exponentially, from the weight and a half that each ball cost to seven .
Last March, they raised the cost of the product again – 9 pesos for Coppelia ice cream and 7 for Varadero, of lower quality – among numerous criticisms for using it in production soy milk. Shortly thereafter, prices dropped slightly, but every week the offer diminished.
This Tuesday, the outside window was only open for a while, to sell a strange peach ice cream, which seemed to have no milk, very different from the one they usually serve on the terraces.
“Let’s go, darling”, a resigned woman said to her companion this Tuesday morning, “that the cathedral of ice cream is no longer even a little chapel.”
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