ONE of the most emblematic features of the Cuban tourism industry, the legendary Floridita bar-restaurant, the home of Daiquiri cocktails, is celebrating its 195th anniversary. This legendary status is in part derived from its patronage by the eminent U.S. novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961).

Located at one of Havana’s most cosmopolitan and lively intersections, the establishment’s history began when an astute Spanish trader opened a small restaurant called the Piña de Plata on the central corner of Obispo and O’Reilly, in the Montserrate barrio of Old Havana. The date: July 6, 1817.

Andrés Arencibia Mohar, the Floridita’s current director, told Granma International that its site close to one of the entries to the walled city of Havana made it an obligatory stopping point for many passersby, who quenched their thirst with horchatas accompanied by sandwiches. "However, the use of ice became more widespread in Havana and mixers with brandy, rum… the cocktail had arrived."

With its immediate success and popularity, La Piña de Plata expanded into an adjoining building (with the addition of a beautiful long mahogany bar, estimated to be more than 115 years old), reaching its current entrance on Bélgica Avenue (formerly Montserrate) and Obispo.

The Piña de Plata was renamed La Florida and its clientele gradually began to identify it as the Floridita. The locale has maintained its Regency style décor since the 1950’s, with an elegance which seems fragile and robust at the same time, much sobriety and exceptional marquetry and taste.

In 1914, Constantino Ribalaigua y Vert, a Spaniard of Catalan origin (1888-1952), arrived in Havana to seek his fortune. Like many of his compatriots, Constantino remained in Cuba, captivated by the Caribbean. And, in his case, he made history. Four years later, he became the owner of the Floridita, in which he had worked as a barman.

The Catalan was intelligent and knew that his establishment had to be different from the rest. He knew its bar secrets and rapidly found the solution. He prepared the delectable Daiquiri, very popular in the eastern region of Cuba, in a blender. From the United States he brought the only ice breaker to be found in Cuba, thus highlighting his creation: the Daiquiri Floridita. He was a maestro in combining flavors. He mixed an ounce and a half of rum, a teaspoon of sugar, the juice of half a Cuban lime and five drops of maraschino and served it in a wide-brimmed glass. It was a miracle! The Daiquiri Floridita, a genuine Cuban symbol from that moment on.

The establishment soon became known as the Daiquiri Cathedral and Constantino Ribalaigua – Constante the barman, as the Cubans called him – the king of cocktail makers, for having extended the refreshing drink throughout the world.

Arencibia Mohar said that cocktails as famed as the Daiquiri Havana Special have emerged from the hands of his bartenders, keeping alive a very particular tradition. The current cocktail menu contains 17 types through the establishment.

The Floridita’s rich history contains anecdotes of what Havana was and is, its most select visiting figures in the world of culture, arts, politics and social life who have enjoyed its excellent cocktails and seafood dishes, prepared by master chefs skilled in international and Cuban cuisine.

"In 1953, Esquire magazine recognized the Floridita as one of the seven most famous bars in the world, together with the San Francisco Pied Piper Bar, the Paris and London Ritz, Raffles in Singapore, Club 21's in New York and the Shelbourne Hotel Bar in Dublin. In 1992, it won the Best Five Star Diamond Award given by the American Academy of Gastronomic Science as the King of Daiquiri and the most representative restaurant specializing in seafood," Arencibia Mohar noted.

"But there is one character in all of this history who cannot be overlooked, without him, the Daiquiri would not be what it is today. I’m referring to the mark left by Ernest Hemingway, the U.S. writer and journalist, one of the principal novelists and short story writers of the 20th century, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year.

The celebrated phrase, "My Mojito in the Bodeguita, my Daiquiri in the Floridita," is attributed to Hemingway, one of the establishment’s most assiduous clients.

The boom in cocktails and their internationalization is due to Hemingway, given that he was a man with many friendships in the world and American show business and acted as a magnet and guide, thus making the Floridita one of the most famous bars and the center of his long stays and literary circles in Cuba.

After Hemingway and with him, figures of the period such as the Dukes of Windsor, Gene Tunney, Jean Paul Sartre, Gary Cooper, Dominguín, Tennessee Williams, Charles Scribner, Spencer Tracy, Rocky Marciano, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Samuel Elliot Morrison, Buck Lanham, Herbert Matthews and Errol Flynn.

The author of For Whom The Bell Tolls had his own cocktail, the Daiquiri Hemingway "Papa" Special: double rum, without sugar, the juice of half a lime, a few drops of grapefruit juice, crowned with frappe and half a teaspoon of maraschino.

The enduring presence of the author of Farewell to Arms can be felt from the entrance to the bar, due to the work of two Cuban artists. José Villa Soberón’s life-size bronze sculpture of Hemingway seated at the bar, made in 2003, and a bust sculpted by Fernando Boada in 1954 flank the first stool to the left of the bar, where the novelist liked to sit in his short pants and sandals for his favorite drink, the Papa Doble Special.

The celebrities of yesteryear have been joined by contemporary ones: Paco Rabanne, Joaquín Sabina, Silvio Rodríguez, Javier Sotomayor, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Matt Dillon, Danny Glover, Jack Nicholson, Giorgio Armani, Ornella Muti, Alicia Alonso, Gianni Mina, Jean Michael Jarre, Fito Páez, Cecilia Roth, Francis Ford Coppola and Jean Paul Belmondo, besides the thousands of tourists who have visited Hemingway’s second home in Havana.

Granma International’s visit surprisingly coincided with that of Spaniard Enrique Gutiérrez, a legendary cocktail maestro aged 83 years, runner up in the World Championship in Argentina in 1964, World champion in Palma de Mallorca in 1967 and European champion in 1981. And his first maestro was precisely a book containing the secrets of Daiquiri and other cocktails from the Floridita, which has been preserved as an exclusive heritage despite the passing of time.

He had never been in Cuba and was paying his dues en route to Panama. And he couldn’t have chosen a better moment to do so.

"I knew from reference about the Floridita, having been told that it is the home of the Daiquiri, and what this bar is. And it’s true, there isn’t anywhere like it in the world, I had to visit it," he added, seated with his wife Guadalupe Revuelta González.

Its memorable moments are many, like the one related by Ariel Valdés Vervía, restaurant captain for 15 years, who served former U.S. President James Carter, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, when he visited the Floridita in 2002 and 2011. The bar is considered by the TripAdvisor website as among the 27 top establishments of its kind in the world, and among the top 50 bars by the British Drinks International magazine.