It is always a good moment to remember our ancestors. The close ones, naturally, because no matter how hard I try I cannot summon the memory of my grandparents, nor the great‑grands, nor the elders before them… I never met them. My three grandmothers—one of them a great‑aunt—were always impeccably behaved, devoutly Catholic, endowed with a natural elegance unembellished by refinements. Perhaps because of the times and the kind of life they were groomed for, they developed an exceptional talent for keeping their domestic skirmishes invisible. They said everything to one another through twisted rhetorical flourishes which, had I taken note of them, would today be a priceless linguistic treasure.

That was it: they cultivated bienestar—or rather, the art of saber estar: the grace of composure. In the Cuba for which we sacrificed so much, and in vain, scarcity was a constant. Something was always missing. Not as it is now, when everything is missing, but in my early youth it was rare to satisfy even the simplest whim. And yet—something I have so often seen in old series and, above all, in films—misery was faced with a certain flair. Cuba always felt somewhat European. Perhaps because we never had pre‑Columbian heroes, nor temples, nor anything of the kind. The most sophisticated tool devised by our Siboney ancestors was a coa, a sharpened stick for opening holes in the earth. Perhaps also because we were so close to Spain and later to the United States. And when we broke away from good governance—what a calamity—and drifted toward the socialist bloc, we merely followed other lights, strange lights, but European all the same.