Surrounded by marmoreal hills that served as natural fortresses for the
city, its Isabel II Square, then called General Lacret and then Gerrillero
Heroico and Kilometro Zero to any destination in the Isle of Youth, was
the stage for the foundational ceremony of the village in 1830.

Two years earlier, about a dozen men doomed to serve sentences in prison
cleaned the area from tangled bushes, at the former Isla de Pinos and then
Reina Amalia Colony, to give birth to Nueva Gerona in honor to the epic
Spanish battle of Girona.

Thus, Spanish king Fernando VII complied with a request by the General
Captain of Cuba, Fernando Dionisio Vives, the then president of the White
Population Board.

Nueva Gerona, a city that does not boast of having an exquisite
architecture, but of having of the largest rectangular constructions in
line with the first basilicas, has overcome time and storms; and that
clear mark does not go unnoticed by local and foreign visitors.

Antillean baroque did not leave its magnificence there, but the sobriety
of architraves, arcades, facades, wide doorways, and big columns
throughout its historic center, which has been embellished to celebrate
another anniversary.

This village is not abundant in cobbled streets, but today in the former
Royal way (nowadays Jose Marti Street) this rectangular pieces made from
marble, clay, and cement imprint a new look to the main commercial road in
Gerona.

This centenarian city, which has witnessed love and indifference,
agreements and disagreements, deportations and uprisings, abandonment and
discovery, pillage and heroism throughout its history, will celebrate its
141 st anniversary as village with lot of dancing and music among its people.