Trinidad City, Cuba, a poem in each stone

In Trinidad it seems that the time stopped in 1514, when the Spanish conquerors founded this city, named Nuestra Senora de la Santisima Trinidad. Trinidad, as the Cubans call it, is a poem in each of the stones that make up its narrow back streets, on which the past moves along, in the form of a venerable grandfather, who has just knitted his wicker baskets to sell in the Plaza Mayo. And the present makes its debut, in a young man, who revs up his motorcycle before the curious looks of his fellow city residents and the hundreds of tourists, who every day fill the center of the city with their different languages.

Trinidad is the precious wood found in the entrances oh homes and windowsills, brass doorknockers, iron artistically shaped in grills and gratings, ceramists' masterpieces in the form of red tile roofs, and architecture that reflects the opulence or the humidity of the city's first residents.

In 1988, UNESCO proclaimed the city of Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios to be a World Heritage site. In the past, the sugar industry experienced a rapid development in this region, thanks to the richness of the land.

Musicians and artisans offer their best performances to each visitor to this colonial city, which Diego Velazquez called Manzanilla, or Camomile, in recollection of the city of the same name in Huelva, Spain; or perhaps because of the aroma of the plant of the same name, which has healing powers that the aboriginal inhabitants were already familiar with and used before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors.