“Don't bother discovering churches, buildings or squares in a city. If you want to know their culture, spend a night in their bars ”. The phrase belongs to Ernest Hemingway. The first thing he did when he got to Havana was drink it whole. The American writer first set foot in Cuba in 1928. He stayed for two days at the Ambos Mundos hotel, on Obispo Street, one of the most touristy in the capital. A few steps away, on the corner with Monserrate, he found El Floridita, a bar he frequented for 22 years and which was popularized in Islands in the Gulf , a novel published posthumously. There he befriended its owner, Constante Ribalaigua, a Catalan emigrant whom he christened the king of daiquiris. A documentary now rescues his figure.
Constante y El Floridita de Hemingway will compete this Sunday at the XXIII Malaga Film Festival within the official Kitchen section, which this year opens in the contest. The film is the result of the investigation carried out by the Catalan journalist Ramon Vilaró, who came across the story in the nineties. “Constante is one of many young people who emigrated to Cuba. He began to work with some relatives and in 1914 he arrived at El Floridita. Four years later he becomes its owner ”, he reveals. That would completely change the history of the mixology.
“Half of the documentary explains the relationship between the two characters. If I hadn't had a Nobel laureate as a client, no one would talk about Constante ”, admits the director of the feature film by phone. On the other hand, Rafa Malém, president of the Cuban Bartenders Association, maintains that Constante is "the greatest mixologist of all time." The film begins with the journalist reading a fragment of Islands in the Gulf . Vilaró then wonders who was that man who was born in Lloret de Mar in 1889 and died in Havana in 1952, seven years before the revolution triumphed and the place passed into the hands of the Cuban government. Bartenders, historians and writers try to explain its importance in mixology for 51 minutes.
The Double Pope
The Catalan left more than 200 formulas and five of the ten great cocktails. In 1953, Esquire magazine recognized El Floridita as one of the seven most famous bars in the world. But if something distinguishes the place is its relationship with the daiquiri. The bartender Orlando Blanco relates that the invention corresponds to some American engineers who worked on the Caribbean island: “They only had rum, ice, sugar and lemon. They mixed everything together and named the cocktail after a beautiful beach located 30 kilometers from Santiago de Cuba ”. Legend has it that Constante reinterpreted the recipe as a frappé thanks to the arrival of the blender in the 1920s. In addition, he added maraschino, a cherry liqueur. One day the bartender asked his fetish customer if he liked the drink. Hemingway, who everyone knew as Papa , replied that he was diabetic and that he found it too sweet. The mixologist then prepared a new mix, this time with an extra portion of rum and no sugar, the Double Potato.
“I have been drinking since I was 15 years old and there are few things that have given me so much pleasure,” Hemingway used to repeat to explain his love for this cocktail. When in the 1940s he moved to Finca Vigía, 15 kilometers from Havana, he took them in a thermos and, if he held a reception, he could not miss that drink to entertain the guests. The writer Ciro Bianchi explains that the place opened its doors in 1817 and that it changed its name because there was already a Hotel Florida on that street. Despite the renovations, it maintains the magic of the past: the wooden bar, the British-style decoration and the red vests of the waiters. Now, a neon sign invites passersby to enter the place, which has live musical performances and offers meals, although its cuisine is not as distinguished as in the past.
"It is an obligatory stop for the traveler who wants to taste a daiquiri with history", recognizes Ana Parra, a Malaga-based living in Cuba who organizes routes with Excursions Havana. Parra maintains that one of the weaknesses of tourists is to be photographed with the statue of the writer. The life-size sculpture was made in 2003 by José Villa Soberón and is installed at the end of the bar that Hemingway used to occupy in El Floridita. Then came Ava Gardner, Gary Cooper, Tennessee Williams or Jean Paul Sartre. “I imagine the Havana of the fifties as a movie”, highlights the actor Jorge Perugorría. The truth is that the city continues to stand still in time.