The historic swimming pool of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba was demolished this week as part of an investment being carried out in that tourist facility, declared a National Monument in May 1998.
Art curator Abelardo Mena was alarmed by the decision and shared an image on Facebook of the state of the pool after the demolition.
"The violation committed by the Hotel Nacional in the work carried out in the north pool was corroborated. The work was paralyzed and the National Institute of Territorial Planning and Urban Planning (INOTU) was notified to apply the procedure in force today," wrote Mena .
In another comment, the expert recalled that the pool decided to remain as a historical relic in 1989, because personalities who stayed at the hotel bathed in it, hence the confusion over the decision to completely destroy it.
"It didn't require any action like this," he said.
Luis Miguel Díaz Sánchez, director of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, at the end of last year declared to the official agency Latin Press, which would assume an investment process, which would include the aforementioned pool.
"The capital investment of the historic swimming pool and the total remodeling of the buffet restaurant are being prepared, to begin in January 2023 and be completed by May," declared the manager, without offering more details of the process.
CyberCuba wrote to the hotel management, the Gran Caribe company and the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, to find out more details about what happened and if the process has included the advice of qualified personnel for the management of works. patrimonial; but so far they had not responded to the messages sent.
He National Hotel of Cuba It was inaugurated in 1930, it is an eclectic Spanish style building that stands on Taganana Hill and in front of the Malecón, with views of the port of Havana and a part of the city.
It was designed by the New York architecture studio McKim, Mead and White , financed by the National City Bank from New York, and built in fourteen months by the American engineering studio Purdy and Henderson.
In more than 90 years it has received important guests such as Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Jimmy Carter, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Mickey Mantle, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Keaton, Jorge Negrete, Agustín Lara, Rocky Marciano, Tyrone Power, Rómulo Gallegos, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Ernest Hemingway, Yuri Gagarin, Alexander Fleming, among others.
That hotel has also been the scene of controversial events, such as prevent access to Cuban citizens, who wanted to enter their facilities; either the sale of "romantic dinners" for more than three thousand pesos during 2021, the hardest year of the pandemic in Cuba and where people quickly became poorer with the application of the Ordering Task.
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