Cuba Guide
Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey
Parque Agramonte
Address: A few blocks south of the Casa Natal de Nicolás Guillén
The Parque Ignacio Agramonte, the town's social centre, is filled with shady tamarind trees, tinajones and marble benches, where parents watch their offspring whizz about on makeshift skateboards and clamber all over the central statue of Ignacio Agramonte.
Each corner of the square is pegged by a royal palm to symbolize the deaths of four independence fighters – leader Joaquín Agüero, Tomás Betancourt y Zayas, Fernando de Zayas and Miguel Benavides – shot for treason here by the Spanish in the early struggles for independence. The men were immediately hailed as martyrs and the townsfolk planted the four palms as a secret tribute, the Spanish authorities ignorant of their significance. Local women also sheared off their long hair, claiming that it was unseemly to be beautiful in times of hardship. By such subversive means the people of Camagüey kept the memories of the heroes alive; now, in front of each palm, is an explanatory plaque.
Dominating the parque's south side is the Catedral de Santa Iglesia (daily 9am– noon), built in the seventeenth century to be the largest church in the Puerto Príncipe parish. It was rebuilt in the nineteenth century when it took its present form, but despite its auspicious heritage it is one of Camagüey's least impressive churches, with a large but empty interior and a faded exterior.