Havana/The opening of Iberostar Cuba Selectionwhich occupies the controversial new skyscraper at 23 and K, in Havana’s El Vedado, was not this January 15, as Havanatur, which promotes the hotel managed by the Spanish firm, had announced. It wasn’t the 16th either, since this Thursday the building remained closed, with scaffolding, cranes and workers lying on the floor, as he was able to verify. 14ymedio.
Asked when the work will be finished, the workers shrugged their shoulders: “We only know that the inauguration was delayed, they say it will be on the 20th or thereabouts.” Although neither the Iberostar website nor that of the state agency Havanatur indicate a date, some tourist reservation pages do: starting next February 1, they offer rooms from 483 and up to 959 dollars per night.
Meanwhile, Cubans’ criticism of State investments focused on five-star tourist facilities is intensifying. The last thing that caused them is the hydraulic work that advanced on Boyeros Avenue for weeks, without government information, towards the neighborhood where the new luxury hotel is located, and about which it finally ruled the official press two days ago.
/ 14ymedio
This is the new driver, Marino Palatino, he explained Cubadebateintended to “replace a network of aging pipes that has caused constant breaks and leaks, affecting approximately 72,250 inhabitants of the Cerro and Plaza de la Revolución municipalities.”
Without mentioning Tower K –something that some commentators do however do at the bottom of the note–, the media acknowledges, speaking of the “population increase in the area” on “an already weakened system, increasing the need for drinking water”: “ “The planned hotel development in the area poses a challenge by further increasing demand.”
The property, popularly called first “López-Calleja tower” – after the deceased head of the Gaesa military conglomerate, owner of the facilities through one of its subsidiaries, the Gaviota Group – and then Torre K, has been surrounded by controversy since the the same moment they announced its construction, in 2018. It represented, from the outset, a waste of resources in an impoverished country.
As the work was being built, and with tourism at its lowest figures, technical criticism also began. So, several architects they pointed out the “mistakes” of the projectamong them the “pretentious gigantism”, the “insulated glass” that dazzles in a tropical country or the poor orientation of the hotel, with no views to the north, the best façade to orient the rooms so that they do not suffer from “that Caribbean sun that costs a lot cool energy and money.”
