The calamitous state of the building has been pointed out many times by local residents.
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez / Olea Gallardo, 18 August 2024 – From outside, La Gran Via, the once dazzling confectionary outlet owned by Santos Suárez, in Havana’s Diez de Octubre district, appears to be just as abandoned as it’s been for years. The front of the building with its peeling red columns and the faded blue lettering on its signage, no longer even sports the brightly lit “Sylvain For You” sign which inducated the name of the national chain which was its last owner. On the other side of the glass everything appears dark and still, although you can see a line of chairs facing inwards right next to the large window, and you can just make out a few empty tin cans.
Everything would indicate that it’s been empty for a long time, but the neighbours hint at something distinctly different happening: “They’re using it for accommodation, there’s a whole bunch of people in there”. That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.
Some Habaneros can still remember the time when the venue sold its famous cream cakes at 3.50 pesos each. “Oh! And with chocolate and everything! Exquisite!” – one resident recalls, almost licking her lips as she lists all the different types of sweet that were to be found in the place: guava tarts, señoritas, montecristos, capitolios, torrejitas, and, of course freshly baked breads. “My grandma was crazy about their cream cakes – I remember how my mum often used to buy one for her birthday, though we kids didn’t like them much because we found them a bit salty”, explains Luisa, from El Vedado, with nostalgia.
That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.
Those times are not so long ago. “Even during the Special Period we used to buy cream cakes”, recalls María, a woman in her forties from the centre of Havana. In spite of the suffering of the terrible 90’s – after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies – La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour.
María also recounts how one of their employees helped her family to survive the food shortages of that time: “An elderly black skinny guy, who’d previously worked for a funeral car company, kept for us the offcuts of the panetelas and cakes that were made at Gran Via. They toasted them in the ovens and gave them to us in distinct little sizes that looked a lot like espondrus (’sponge rusk’). Those irregular shaped little pieces, discarded during the making of cakes and other confectionary, helped us a lot to get by from day to day”.
If La Gran Via was the best confectioners in Havana during Cuba’s worst economic crisis, you can imagine what it must have been like in its best years. Defined as “real pride for Cuban industry”, in the illustrated encyclopaedia ’Book of Cuba’ in 1953, it had been founded in Güines by three Spaniards from Toledo (a city celebrated for its almond-based sweets, such as marzipan). These were the three brothers, José, Valentín y Pedro García Moyano.
Their business and their fame prospered and in the nineteen forties they made the leap over to Havana, to where the same Santos Suárez ruin remains today. According to a former employee, Bartolo Roque, speaking to Maite Rico and Bertrand de la Grange in a report published in 2009 in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, the confectioners eventually employed 120 people.
In the good times the confectioner employed 120 people
Here is how the reporters described the black and white photos that Roque showed them (he was 78 at the time, but only an adolescent when he was originally hired by La Gran Via): “A dazzling new confectioners. The kitchens and the ovens. Five elegant young ladies busy taking telephone orders. A fleet of delivery vehicles with their uniformed drivers. Bartolo making a cake. And in another photo, 37 workers and assistants all wearing long aprons and white caps pose in front of innumerable cream cakes”.
The old man also spoke of how “they brought milk in pitchers to make the cream” for the cakes that were the house speciality.
All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized. The García Moyano brothers fled into exile – in their case to Puerto Rico – and with them a number of master cake makers; but those that stayed, like Bartolo Roque, helped the company’s legacy to avoid disappearing entirely. “We can’t do what we want to do because we lack the raw materials”, said the elderly confectioner in 2009, blaming the “embargo” and praising the spirit which guided the company: “Whether a cake cost 1.5 pesos or 500, they were all of the finest quality. The same quality went to the houses of the rich and high society folks as went to the more modest and humble”.
All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized
It’s unlikely that Roque is still alive today. One could have said the same thing for years about La Gran Via. Its sorry state has been flagged up by locals on many occasions via photos on social media.
On 29 June, Yoel Tamayo Valdés posted on Facebook a denunciation of “the current total abandonment by the authorities and by its owner Sylvain” of what “was once the best and the most technically advanced and equipped confectioners around”. He said that enormous efforts had been made by private individuals to rent out the property and exploit it, but no one took any notice. “I know an excellent cake-maker friend who had lined up an investor with over a million pesos, about two years ago, but after kicking the idea around, and with the director of Sylvain not even showing his face to offer any information or start up any negotiations, it was never given any proper attention so obviously the opportunity ended up being lost”, said Tamayo Valdés.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies, La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour
Valdés also expressed his disgust at the fact that the place had become occupied by squatters. “How is it possible that they’ve never bothered to find a solution for La Gran Via, but then along comes a family, breaks down the door and starts living there with total impunity?”. And his diatribe continues: “Why don’t they put an end to this kind of piracy?!”
However, any evidence that there is actually anyone living inside La Gran Via is no more than just words. The glass doors are locked, the air-con unit outside is switched off. “There are also two wooden doors, perhaps for the offices, or the stores”, said one passer-by who was selling small birds. Asked for more details, he didn’t want to talk anymore and continued on his way, with his birdcage on his back.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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