The lucrative humidor auction closed the event. The government says the money goes to the Cuban Health System.
By Juan Izquierdo (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – Two cedar drawers one atop the other, a giant Indian head – the Cohiba Behíke logo – and white squares on black varnish: this is the humidor auctioned this Friday for 4.6 million euros (4.7 million dollars) during the closing gala of the Habanos Festival. Never before had so much been paid for a cigar storage unit, whose exclusivity is based on a detail that the official press did not mention: the signature of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Six other humidors – valuable but not signed by the president, a tradition established by Fidel Castro – were auctioned off during the dinner, for a total of 16.41 million euros (17 million dollars). They represented the major cigar brands: Cohiba, Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, H. Upmann, Partagás and Hoyo de Monterrey. According to some media the buyer, who was not identified, is Chinese.
The money, the official press insists goes to the island’s health system. In light of the Cuban health debacle and the total crisis in the country, few can believe this mantra that is repeated at each Festival.
DIaz-Canel was at the dinner, but unlike last year, there were hardly any photos circulating of him smoking among the guests or signing the humidor, gestures that caused great controversy at the last edition of the Festival. Also at the dinner were the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, and other members of the top brass of the regime.
The auctioned piece of furniture was not the only record broken by Habanos SA – the Cuban tobacco monopoly, shared by Cuba and Spain – announced at the beginning of the week that it had had revenues of 827 million dollars in 2024, 106 million more than the previous year.
The auction which, in the past, Castro served as host of millionaires and sometimes served as auctioneer, is the most eagerly awaited event of the Festival, attended by tycoons and fans from around the world. Some of its participants were the first, albeit very discreet, guests of the new luxury hotel Iberostar, in the 42-story K Tower on 23rd Street, opposite the decaying Coppelia.
The closing gala – with entertainment by the legendary group Earth, Wind & Fire – was overshadowed, however, by the “intermediate” dinner that Habanos organized at the Capitol on Wednesday to present another luxury vitola, the H. Upmann Magnum 50. The adjectives that the company used to describe the event left no doubt about its character: “exclusive, refined, exquisite.”
The Salon of Lost Steps, once a place of debate and reflection on the Republic, was filled with 600 guests in tuxedos, overwhelmed by the play of light. No colored lights were spared on the dome of the Capitol, nor on the also gold-plated statue of the Republic, cast in 1928 by the Italian sculptor Angelo Zanelli.
The pro-government journalist and professor at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana, Ana Teresa Badía, harshly criticized the display. “What was the intention this Habanos Festival meant to convey? In a world in which the construction of public opinion is increasingly symbolic, this is very wrong. A serious error in political communication that buries the ideology that Cuba has defended. The place is the headquarters of our Parliament and now it is used in images that resemble a kind of brothel from the 1950s,” she wrote on her Facebook profile.
The painter Hermes Entenza, for his part, wrote: “The Habanos Festival, where glamour becomes ridiculous and extravagant, where the working people, who look at the building in dismay, do not even have cigarettes to smoke. Cuba in the Capitol, Cuba imprisoned by itself, moaning in the dark and feeling the walls of the beautiful building rumble to the sound of the empowered who have raised this movie to the level of a horror film… You have to have a very perverse mind to applaud this revelry.”
The immoderation marked both the making of the humidors and the vitolas. This was underlined by David Savona, director of Cigar Aficionado – the most recognized magazine in the sector – who was present at the Festival, who described step by step the hours it took him to finish the Cohiba Behíke BHK 58, the star of the night.
While the cigars and lights were lit in the Capitol and other Habano Festival venues, the homes of most Cubans were suffering prolonged power outages. On Saturday, when the guests announced their return home with “cigars as gifts,” they left an Island submerged in blackout.
Translated by Translating Cuba.
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