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General Data on the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park
The third square of the city of Holguín, today Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park, it was traced with the purpose of having a free space for the front access to the church projected by the Franciscans Religious Order of the. However, this church was not materialized in spite of the great sum donated for its construction by the Holguin people. The land of the New Square or San Francisco of Assisi it is considered as the first programmed amplification of the city of Holguín and in its surroundings houses began to be built as well as the neighbors’ trade. In the year 1900 the park had already taken the name of Manuel de Cespedes, however, it was much later in 1981 the bust of the Mother Country Father was placed there. This is the smallest of the monuments, without diminishing in beauty and importance.
The Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park and its History
In 1803 a neighbor of the city requested the Archbishop from Cuba the construction of a temple under San José’s invocation. It began to be built in 1809 and it concluded in 1819. This work begins to give the new name to the square, then called San Jose Square. The church is reconstructed in 1842 and changes were carried out it in the tower and the fronton. In the third decade of the XX Century the Square – later on baptized as Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park – was recovered from its pitiful state as consequence of the independence war and the church was enlarged toward the bottom, being built a receiver and the sacristy. In the year 1951 the remodeling of the church is requested since it was not in well state. The project is executed and it took the form that has nowadays. The piazza and the tower are the only thing left. This remodeling did not end.
Outstanding Data on the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park
During the war of independence in 1868 the church was taken by the General Julio Grave de Peralta and the Cuban flag was hoisted in its tower. In the years of the Fertile Truce (1878-1895), the Square was paved with mud potteries , but when being the church used as Spanish barracks during the 95 War (1895-1898), the square next to the church was almost destroyed. On October 10th 1916 it was inaugurated in the center of the current Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Park the monument to the martyrs shot during the wars of independence against the Spanish domain. This monument was sculpted by the house Hugo Luissis in bronze and Carrara marble, it expressed in the figure of an angel today known as “The Big Angel”. The statue, the molds and the crown are worked in bronze and the rest is made of marble. It represents an angel of aching face, deployed wings, with a globe in his feet and sustaining in a hand the crown of the martyrdom and in the other one a laurel field symbol of the victory that is still reached beyond the death. It is the representation of those that seal with their blood a cause of well for all, the bronze used for its realization has resisted the pass of the years.
