This essay seeks to explore to what meanings, exactly, does this hybrid bilingual sign point. What is the connection between the singing of habaneras, the “sailor nights” and Cuba, and why would the advertisers of the Barcelona Gran Casino appeal to the memory of “grandfathers who went to Cuba” to cater to the public, and do so by mixing the two languages spoken in Barcelona in a Spanish-language newspaper? The first line of this advertisement evokes perhaps the most popular Catalan habanera. Its almost obligatory performance at every cantada, public singing of habaneras in Catalonia, arguably makes it an emblem of cultural identity comparable to such broadly acknowledged cultural emblems as the sardana, the Catalan national dance, the castells, building and competitions of human towers that involve hundreds of participants; and the Nova Cançó movement of the sixties.(1) As Salvador Giner points out, Catalonia may be seen as a “small ‘advanced’ stateless nation” where “symbolic acts of ethnicocultural affirmation” continue to play a major role in the assertion of national identity (Giner 1984: 10). These small nations, such as the Baltic nations of the former Soviet Union, survived the suppression of their languages and autochthonous cultures during the times of dictatorships and managed to preserve their cherished cultural identities through such cultural signs as traditional dances, festivals, or sports.

The exploration of the habanera, a musical genre whose very name points to the connection with the Cuban capital city, may offer a new perspective of Catalan culture and identity. Even though the habanera continues its trajectory in many regions of Spain, the permutations of this genre in Catalonia, a stateless nation with a strong feeling of a national identity, offers a privileged space to reflect on the ever-shifting nature of cultural identities.(2) Since the nineteenth century, Catalan cultural identity was constructed on two major pillars: the attachment of the Catalans to their language, in which the literary masterpieces of the early Renaissance were written, and on their national character, a complex of beliefs, values and practices attributed to the nation. As the philosopher Ferrater i Mora formulated it, the Catalans possess the following virtues: ironía (an ironic outlook on life), mesura (taking a measured, balanced view of things), continuitat (working persistently over the long term to achieve objectives), and seny (good, old commonsense) (Ferrater i Mora 1967: 239-75).(3) The idealistic terms in which Ferrater i Mora and others described the Catalan national character definitely do not represent the richness of the national character. I will argue that the habanera, a transnational cultural sign, constitutes a site for viewing the emergence of an unconventional identity space for Catalonia. Through Catalan involvement in Spain’s colonial enterprise reiterated in nostalgic songs that evoke a lost tropical paradise embodied in the figure of a mulatto woman, the habanera questions the traditional construction of Catalan identity, built on the opposition to the Other, the Castilian, with its black legend of involvement in slave trafficking. Songs, film and fiction that elaborate on the subject of Catalan involvement in Cuba and the Caribbean, create an identity that acquires new traits, which highlight Catalonia’s complex space within a heterogeneous Spain and a new globalized world.(4)

Similar to other regions of Spain, the habanera gained popularity in Catalonia after 1898, with the return of immigrants and soldiers, and through its recurrent appearance in the zarzuela, a major source of entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century. A legacy of the massive immigration of Spaniards to Cuba, habaneras were transformed at the Costa Brava into a kind of fishermen’s folklore as male trios sang them at taverns in Costa Brava towns all through the twentieth century. During the uneasy years of the civil war in Spain and the post-war decades, the escape into the images of Cuba and the Caribbean, with its palm trees, sensual women, and the sea, became a major means of entertainment. The recurrent motives of the habanera such as a desired mulatto woman left behind in a distant tropical paradise, the sea and a ship--an emblem that brings prosperity to the hard-working nation--arguably served the need for a self-fashioning of Catalonia as a seafaring nation with a place of its own in Spanish colonial enterprise.(5)

A watershed event in the story of the Catalan habanera took place in 1966 when a group of enthusiasts from a small Costa Brava town, Calella de Palafrugell, published a collection of songs, Calella de Palafrugell i les havaneres. The presentation of this book to friends and family turned into a spontaneous singing of beloved songs, and the participants decided to organize an annual public cantada, which took place for the first time during the summer of 1967. The organizers of this event were motivated by a desire to preserve traditional forms of popular culture that seemed threatened by drastic changes brought about by the boom of the tourist industry. The success of this nostalgic summer-night singing exceeded all expectations, and groups of habanera singers started to form all over Catalonia. Some specific facts underscore the outstanding place that the habanera has occupied in Catalan popular culture in recent decades. The annual Cantada d’Havaneres of Calella de Palafrugell has attracted between thirty-five and forty thousand spectators to a town with a winter population of three hundred people. Another popular event is the Mostra de l’Havanera Catalana in Palamós. The story of this highly acclaimed annual event itself presents an opportunity to reflect about the permutations of the habanera as an emblem of Catalan identity. Started as Festival de Cançó Marinera de Palamós in 1972, it became Mostra de l’Havanera Antiga by 1982, and since 1984 is celebrated annually as Mostra de l’Havanera Catalana de Palamós. The change of the title reflects the transformation that the habanera underwent in Catalonia. The representation of the habanera as a dominant song genre on the one hand, and as sung exclusively in Catalan on the other, took place at the time when Spain and Catalonia were passing through a transition triggered by the changes after the death of Franco. Mostra de l’Havanera Catalana de Palamós, which only accepts habaneras in Catalan, may be viewed as a clear-cut attempt at representing the habanera as an autochthonous cultural sign that is an intrinsic part of Catalan identity.

However, habaneras were sung in Catalonia in Spanish for the most part of the twentieth century.(6) As other forms of Spanish poetry and cancionero, they existed in oral tradition and were passed on from one generation to the other.(7) The first collection of Spanish habaneras sung at the Costa Brava was published by Xavier Montsalvatge in 1948.(8) Lavishly illustrated by Josep Maria Prim with a prologue and comments by Néstor Luján, Álbum de habaneras can be seen as a successful attempt at giving folklore a written form.(9) Both Álbum de habaneras and Calella de Palafrugell i les havaneres contained habaneras with lyrics only in Spanish. However, the title, the prologue and comments in Calella de Palafrugell i les havaneres were in Catalan. Soon after, the interest towards the habanera led to the massive creation of new habaneras in Catalan. These new habaneras sometimes continued the tradition of praising the beauty of a woman, often a woman of another race, but they also acquired new themes that sounded as an assertion of Catalan cultural identity and values. The juxtaposition of some habaneras that resound most frequently on the shorefronts of the coastal Catalonia may help to explore the phenomenon of the Catalan habanera, which includes traditional Spanish habaneras and new habaneras in Catalan. If one looks at the programs of Cantada d’Havaneres of Calella de Palafrugell from 1993 to 2003, one can see that the finale of this event always includes two habaneras--the traditional habanera “La bella Lola,” whose author is unknown, and “El meu avi,” the habanera by José Luís Ortega Monasterio (1918-2004). First notated in Montsalvatge’s Álbum de habaneras, “La bella Lola” may be explored as a paradigm of a traditional habanera. It is performed in the two four time classical for the habanera, the lyrics are in Spanish, and the subject revolves around the encounter with a lovely woman left behind in an overseas port. The first stanza of this habanera offers an explanation of events whose meaning is transparent to anybody familiar with Spanish history:

In this stanza the first person narrator disappears, and the story loses the emotional quality of a personal narrative. However, it acquires a universality that can be projected on other males, who become insane because of Lola’s beauty. The love madness of the sailors achieves its climax in the fact that “even the pilot” loses direction. The metaphor of pilot and direction points to the maritime lexicon and mindset of those for whom the song was once created and by whom it was sung and preserved. Habaneras sung in Spanish may be seen through the prism of Catalan involvement in Spain’s colonial enterprise that made Catalonia economically the most prosperous region within Spain. As with the flamenco in flamenco bars in Andalusia, the habanera is performed in taverns and casinos in Catalonia regularly. The regular singing of habaneras by hired habanera singers at taverns and restaurants in Catalonia represents a reenactment of what may well be another cultural myth. It is the myth of habanera singing at the Costa Brava--nostalgic songs that evoke the times of the lost empire represent the yearning for times long gone when the beaches were not crowded, the problem of parking did not exist, and the fishermen sang the songs in the intimate atmosphere of the tavern for a few sophisticated fans that would come from the big cities during the summer.

In the late 1960s, the time of the tourist boom all over Spain, habaneras not only leapt from the intimacy of a small tavern to the megawatt amplification of town squares and stages by the Mediterranean, but they also started addressing the audience in Catalan. Some habaneras were then translated from Spanish as well as many new habaneras were created. Among these new habaneras, “El meu avi,” composed in 1968 and first sung in public in 1971, may be viewed as a crucial point in the story of Catalan habanera. On the one hand, “El meu avi” followed the tradition of wartime narrative habaneras such as “Adiós mi península hermosa,” “El adiós del soldado,” “El Catalán.” On the other, it told a story that had a precise “local” connection: the protagonists of this habanera were from Calella de Palafrugell, a specific location that gave the audience and singers a chance to identify themselves with the imagined past and with Catalan “small motherland.” At the time of the creation and the first public singing of this habanera, Calella de Palafrugell was becoming more and more popular every year with its newly established tradition of public cantades. The song told the story of “my grandfather” and of fourteen sailors from Calella de Palafrugell who during the colonial war were sent to Cuba on board of a ship with an emblematic name Catalán. A triple evocation of the grandfather, “el meu avi,” at the beginning of the song tuned the audience into a mood suggestive of collective memory:

Most importantly, at the time of its creation through the present, “El meu avi” contained an exclusively significant line, “Visca Catalunya! Visca el “Catalán”! (Long live Catalonia! Long live the Catalan!). These words that apparently escaped the censor’s attention turned “El meu avi” into an emblem of identity unanimously embraced by the nation. Behind the name of the ship, the performers and the audience perceived a second meaning with a transparent allusion to the vernacular language and its significance for Catalan cultural identity. The importance these words had during the last years of a dictatorship that sought to eradicate the language and all traces of national culture and identity is self-evident. “El meu avi” may be viewed as a kind of a simulacrum, a nostalgic evocation of a song genre that did not exist in Catalan, however, was accepted as such by the whole nation. The “unisonance” highlighted by Benedict Anderson “for the echoed physical realization of the imagined community,” when national anthems or the like are performed, was and is evident in the case of “El meu avi,” as the audience tended and continue to get up and sway sideways with their arms on each other shoulders during the singing of this song thus reenacting the unity of the nation.(12)

The impact of “El meu avi” on Catalan cultural imaginary can be seen through the prism of other works of different genres that responded to it. The habanera-sardana, “L’avi Quim no va anar a Cuba,” by Francesc A. Picas and Paco Viciana, pretended to give tribute to those who refused to collaborate with the colonial politics of Spain’s imperial machine. The author speculated that if the sailors of Palafrugell had followed the example of his grandfather Quim who refused to be recruited to go to the war in 1898 and hid in the Pyrenees, they would not have died in the Caribbean. Thus this unique hybrid--a pacifist habanera-sardana--entered into a polemic dialogue with “El meu avi.” However, even as it created this opposition, it enhanced the mythical stature of the sailors from Calella de Palafrugell. Though seemingly opposed to “El meu avi,” “L’avi Quim” reiterated the slogan that made so significant the habanera “El meu avi.” Slightly changed, “Visca, sempre, Catalunya,” it was now enhanced by a religious formula, “i el bon Déu que ens l’ha donat,” (and the good God who gave it to us). It evoked the senyera, the Catalan flag, and Montserrat, a geographic and religious symbol of Catalonia,(13) underscoring established national emblems.

The habanera “La meva àvia,” “My grandma” by A. J. Carrau, bore a transparent allusion to “El meu avi” in its title and in the first verse, “Quan per anar a fer la guerra a Cuba, el meu avi va embarcar,” when my grandpa embarked to make war in Cuba. It told a life-long story of a woman, the narrator’s grandmother and a wife of a sailor who left her to go to war in Cuba. The woman left behind on land is a traditional motif for the habanera. Yet in this habanera the motif was reinvented. When the grandma was told that the Catalans would not return--another evocation of “El meu avi”--she remembered the words that her husband said to her before he left:

The perception of the habanera as a signifier of a relationship between a white man and a mulatto woman in this song may be viewed as a self-reflective discourse concerned with the relevance of the habanera for Catalan identity.

New times bring along new songs. Some new Catalan habaneras followed the tradition of the discourse of love and desire for a woman, frequently a mulata, while some may be viewed as self-reflection and parody of the stereotypes of the habanera. The representation of the protagonist in “Lola la tavernera,” by Carles Casanovas, sounds as a self-indulging parody due to a detailed description of the protagonist’s masculinist virtues: “mariner jove, tibat i fort/ amb fulard negre lligat al coll/ alt, roda-soques, perdonavides i adulador,” (a young sailor, conceited, strong, / with a black scarf tied around his neck, / tall, a drifter, a bully and a flatterer), enters a tavern and asks Lola--an evocation of “La bella Lola”--to run and bring him a glass of wine while he will be singing his song to her (XXXVI Cantada 2002: 5).(14) The linguistic means chosen by the author parody the romantic and evasive language of the traditional habanera. While in the traditional habanera the beauty of a mulatto woman was hidden behind the descriptions of flowers and allusions to exotic tropical fruit, aimed at inflaming the imagination of singers and listeners, this habanera is frivolously naming the parts of the woman’s body in a plain and straightforward language: “ella mou el cul, balanceja els pits, xiscla una rialla,” (she swayes her hips, swing her breasts, screames a laugh). “Lola la tavernera” can be perceived as a post-modern evocation of motives and themes of the traditional habanera as the protagonist tells “mulateta bella,” (beautiful mulatto woman), how her body ignites him, the sailor, who will love her until the end of his days if she wants to be his. In response to this offer, the beautiful Lola “llença el dalantal,” (throws away her apron), perhaps an evocation of the “delantal” of the traditional habanera “La caña dulce,” and dances gracefully for her lover.(15) Interestingly, the encounter between Lola and the sailor is directly associated with the habanera as a means of communication between the man and Lola. In addition to an indirect evocation of the traditional habanera through linguistic means, “Lola la tavernera” directly evoked the traditional habanera, a song originated in Cuba, with its paradigmatic elements, a mulatto woman and the sea: “amb la guitarra i un got de vi, / cantará alegre tota la nit, / cançons de Cuba, cants de mulates i blau mari,” (with a guitar and a glass of wine, / he will happily during the entire night sing songs of Cuba, and of mulattas and the deep blue sea). “Lola la tavernera” is performed together with “El meu avi” as the finale of the annual Mostra de l’Havanera Catalana in Palamós. Thus it tends to represent a Catalan analogue of “La bella Lola,” a paradigmatic traditional habanera.

The perception of the habanera as a beloved genre resounds in the habanera “Vestida de nit,” lyrics by Gloria Cruz and music by Càstor Pérez. A sensitive artist, Cruz fills her lyrics with pictorial images. Some of these images are frequently used and abused in habaneras, however, Cruz offers a non-trivial perspective of what makes the habanera the beloved genre for a century and a half. Her perspective is visual and auditory at the same time:

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FERRATER i MORA, J. (1967) “Las formas de la vida catalana.” Obras selectas. Vol 1. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, pp. 238-75.

FRADERA, J. M. (1984) “Catalunya i Cuba en el segle XIX: el comerç d’esclaus”, “Dossier”, L’Avenç, num. 75, pp. 42-47.

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MASRIERA, A. (1926) Oliendo a brea: Hombres, luchas y cosas de mar de la Cataluña ochocentista. Barcelona.

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1 - The sardana is traditionally considered to be the most distinguished element of Catalan popular culture. One can see it performed regularly by the public that gathers at parks and squares in Catalan cities and towns. In Barcelona, one can join the sardana circle on Sunday mornings in front of the Barcelona cathedral. About the sardana as a distinctive feature of Catalan society and a basis for Catalanism, a theory and a practice of Catalan nationalist movement, see Balcells 1996: 52; Brandes 1990: 24-40; Conversi 1997: 133-134. The movement of the builders of human towers is growing definitely into the twenty-first century as it embraces more participants outside of the traditional areas of Valls or Tarragona where it originated. The Nova Cançó movement, which started in the sixties, combined highly politically charged auteur songs with the folk elements and flourished in the last decade of the Franco regime. Its political repercussions, in the words of Salvador Giner, went beyond anyone’s expectations (Giner 1984: 62). Having started with translations of songs in the style of Joan Baez and George Brassens, soon the creators of the Nova Cançó turned to highly politically charged texts by Catalan authors. About the role of the Nova Cançó for the promotion of Catalan language and for the assertion of Catalan national identity see Balcells 1996: 146; Giner 1984: 62-63; Johnston 1991: 178-183, 220. [tornar]

2 - One can hear old and new habaneras in regions with traditionally strong links to the Americas, such as Alicante, the Basque Country, Cádiz, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Murcia, and even Castile. Different regions of Spain claim to sing the habanera with their own distinctive features. In the Basque Country, habaneras are performed by traditional otxotes, groups of eight men divided into four voices. In Totana, Murcia, habaneras are sung by female corales, a practice dating back to the times of the massive packaging of fruit for export in this rural area. A clear indicator of habanera’s popularity across Spain and elsewhere is the Annual Habanera Choral Festival of Torrevieja, Alicante, celebrated since 1954 and broadcast nationwide, attracting choirs from all over the world. [tornar]

3 - Seny, however, tends to be the most controversial of these qualities, as Catalan history arguably abounds in outbursts of rage and uncontrolled actions. John Hargreaves mentions rauxa as “the other side of seny--a propensity to seek relief, on occasion, from social constraint by indulging in uncontrollable emotion and outbursts of irrational behavior: from getting drunk and fornicating to burning churches and convents” (Hargreaves 2000: 22).[tornar]

4 - Antoni Verdaguer’s TV miniseries Havanera 1820 highlighted the participation of Catalans in Spain’s colonial enterprise. The protagonists of this cinematic habanera are Catalans involved in slave trafficking in Cuba in the early nineteenth century. Likewise, the habanera was reinvented in popular novels published at the time when Spain and Catalonia were rethinking the impact of the disaster associated with the end of Spanish colonial empire in 1898. Two recent novels, En el mar de les Antilles (1998), in Catalan by Manel Alonso i Català, and Habanera: El reencuentro con un oculto pasado antillano (1999), in Spanish by Ángeles Dalmau, may be explored as a space where one can view a reinvention of popular discourse concerned with the participation of Catalonia in Spain’s colonial enterprise from the perspective of the late twentieth century. [tornar]

5 - Catalan connections with overseas colonies, among which Cuba and Puerto Rico remained within the Spanish empire until 1898, have received much attention in recent Catalan historical discourse as well as in fiction and film. Between 1985 and 1993, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan regional government, sponsored five conferences, entitled Jornades d’Estudis Catalanos-Americans that explored the economic, political, sociological, and cultural aspects of Catalan immigration to the Caribbean. In view of 1998, the year when Spain was rethinking the impact of the loss of the last overseas colonies of the Spanish empire, various exhibits were held at the museums of Barcelona and other Catalan cities and towns. See Comissió Catalana del Cinqué Centenari del Descobriment d’Amèrica, Jornades d’Estudis Catalanos-Americans. (Barcelona, 1985, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1993). Catalunya i Ultramar: Poder i negoci a les colonies espanyoles (1750-1914) (Barcelona, 1995); “Americanos” “Indianos”: arquitectura i urbanisme al Garraf, Penedès i Tarragonès (Baix Gaià), segles XVIII-XX, (Vilanova i la Geltrù, 1998); Escolta Espanya: Catalunya i la crisis del 98, (Barcelona, 1998). [tornar]

6 - Xavier Febrés mentions a collection of habaneras published in 1927 that contained various habaneras in Catalan, however this collection is lost and is not available (Febrés 1995: 97-98). According to Anna Vicens, the first known habanera in Catalan dates back to 1868 (Vicens 1993).[tornar]

7 - In addition to the recurrent appearance in the zarzuela, habaneras together with other popular songs were transmitted all over Spain by the blind who sold pliegos de cordel, lyrics printed on separate folded sheets of paper. The popularity of pliegos de cordel offers an opportunity to reflect how oral and written traditions converge. The Centro Etnográfico de la Diputación de Valladolid has a broad collection of pliegos de cordel with various habaneras. According to Mendoza Díaz-Maroto, it was women who bought, read and very often learned by heart the contents of these popular sheets sold by the blind (Mendoza Díaz-Maroto 2000: 19). [tornar]

8 - The late composer Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002) mentioned in his autobiographical notes that habaneras which he heard once in 1945 in coastal Catalonia not only opened to him a whole world of overseas images, but also, in a certain way, suggested the style of his “Canciones negras” and gave birth to the antillanismo of some of his works (Montsalvatge 1988: 71-75).[tornar]

9 - As only a thousand copies were published, Álbum de habaneras soon became a bibliographic rarity. A facsimile edition was published in 1998. An analogy with Cancionero de palacio and other collections of Spanish traditional lyrics is useful here, as these anthologies preserved poetry that already existed for decades or even centuries in oral tradition.[tornar]

10 - At the annual Cantada of Calella de Palafrugel, the booklet with lyrics of the performed songs includes a white kerchief thus suggesting an opportunity for the audience to sing along and wave the kerchiefs. [tornar]

11 - In some printed versions of this song, the second and the first stanzas are interchanged. [tornar]

12 - Benedict Anderson attributes a central role to poetry and songs in the realization of imagined communities: “[T]here is a special kind of contemporaneous community which language alone suggests--above all in the form of poetry or songs. Take national anthems, for example, sung on national holidays. No matter how banal the words and mediocre the tunes, there is in this singing an experience of simultaneity. At precisely such moments, people wholly unknown to each other utter the same verses to the same melody. The image: unisonance. Singing the Marseillaise, Waltzing Matilda, and Indonesia Raya provide occasions for unisonality, for the echoed physical realization of the imagined community.” (Anderson 1983: 132-33)[tornar]

13 - As is well known, Montserrat hosts the most prominent religious center of Catalonia, a monastery and a sanctuary of the major Catalan religious relic, the Virgin of Montserrat. This religious center played an exceptional role in the organization of the silent protest of the Catalans against the Franco dictatorship.[tornar]

14 - I am grateful to P. C. Garriga for help with the translation of “Lola la tavernera.” [tornar]

15 - See Montsalvatge 1998: 13.[tornar]

16 - These figures usually form a couple, which represents a town, a city or a district, during annual processions of festes majors at which they perform their dance. Though historically the roots of the creation of giants can be traced back to medieval Corpus Christi processions, Vilassar de Mar, a coastal town with 250 year-old history, never had a pair of giants. The giants were created in 1998. [tornar]

17 - El Pigat was the nickname of Pere Mas i Roig, a native of Vilassar de Mar who in 1868 made a failed attempt at slave trafficking from Africa long after the prohibition of slave trade in 1820 (Masriera 1926: 160, Fradera 1984: 44). Mas i Roig is also one of the protagonists of the three part documentary Retrats d’indians produced by the Catalan network TV-3 and first aired on July 11, 18 and 25, 2001. [tornar]