Havana: It finally arrived November 16. The capital of Cuba today celebrates its 500 years of foundation and the sky shone in tribute to it with a magnificent fireworks show, Prensa Latina publishes.

Just as a year ago, Havana Historian Eusebio Leal Spengler foresaw it, under a light drizzle the Wonder City celebrated the arrival of its half millennium with the traditional round to the ceiba.

At that time, when the city was celebrating its 499 birthdays, Leal Spengler asked the providence to grant Cubans the same joy of meeting there.

And although he was not physically standing by the leafy tree, with his leisurely walk and polished oratory, his prophecy came true at the opening of a new year for the capital of all Cubans.

The traditional ceremony gathered hundreds of visitors and city dwellers at the site where the first mass and the first town hall were held in the village of San Cristóbal.

The words of the Full Professor of the San Gerónimo de La Habana University College, Félix Julio Alfonso, reminded the illustrious scholar, creator of that wonderful utopia that is the restored, preserved, clean and beautiful city. "Here we are with you, Eusebio, next to the unbeatable work that for more than half a century you have done to ennoble the city and with it Cuba”, Alfonso said recalling being inseparable from the magnificent ritual.

The intellectual recalled the city of poets and romantics, of vegueros, of heroes, humble, mestizo people, witness of innumerable historical events, mother of hundreds of neighborhoods that shaped the new urban physiognomy of the capital.

He reiterated his thanks to the outstanding management of the Office of the Historian who under the leadership of Emilio Roig and Leal Spengler achieved the prodigy of maintaining their historic center declared Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In his address, the academic also highlighted the beauty of the city, the lighting of its avenues, new homes, schools and health and recreation centers built for the benefit of its inhabitants.

Havana grows, lives, sings, dances, dreams. Neither threats nor blockades can break the will and joy of the people that countless times go to places to give their support to the Revolution and Fidel, he said.

Before concluding, Alfonso, encouraged the inhabitants of Havana, natives and established, not to stop at this 500th anniversary, and see it as a starting point to achieve new achievements, a permanent challenge for imagination and utopia for a better city.

Minutes later the sky lit up with fireworks, magnificent spectacle, because from the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña brought the euphoria and joy of the expected 500.

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