CAMAGÜEY.- He is King Ferdinand the 7th painted by Goya three years before he signed the paper to grant the title of city to the most Mediterranean town in Cuba.

By that date, November 12th, 1817, the Villa de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe only had the words "port" and "prince" left in its name. By fleeing so much from gnats, mosquitoes, the lack of drinking water and the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants, those emigrants achieved a certain peace inland, between two rivers.

I don't know if they presented the king with a portrait of the overseas settlement, since the beautiful view in Laplante's engraving is of a later date, especifically from 1865. I don't know if to convince him they put together the file with real and inflated data, I don't doubt it either.

At least since the 18th century, travelers have praised this large town. Among them, Bishop Morell of Santa Cruz stated that “with the exception of Havana, there is no town on the Island that exceeds it, nor even equals it.”

What was Puerto Príncipe or Camagüey (for the Taíno name) like ? The streets were dusty or muddy. This would also continue in the first decades of the 20th century, described by Nicolás Guillén, to whom it was still a town sick with boredom.

Buildings made of ceramics and wood proliferated, people from the plains with a lot of livestock and smuggling. Surely, for this last matter, they found a strategic headquarters here for the Royal Court.

If the king wanted to give the pen in favor, it would have a benefit beyond the demographic and geopolitical indicators on the route of promotion to that category. Let's speculate. Maybe he was thinking of visiting us, but his galas had a different type of runway. The tropics would be relentless with Fernando, however, tell me how many risks are not taken on behalf of business.

Well, 206 years later, today in Camagüey we celebrate that favor from the king. Under that pretext we have a date and with the date an institutional anniversary program, promoted by the Office of the Historian of Camagüey.

Another fact always seems imprecise to me. When did we start to be a city? Have we really been? What idea did we have of the city and what have we done with it? What city do we aspire to? If the city is defined by the quality of life of the citizen, how present is the citizen in the projects presented in the name of the city? How much do we stop doing every day for it immersed in our daily vicissitudes?

I told him all this in silence one October morning at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain, in front of the Goya painting. I return to the portrait. The gaze of Ferdinand the 7th returns my questions like an enigma. The expression on his mouth and that gesture as if he were looking askance or contempt, I don't think the king cared so much about us on his throne. Instead, I think and smile: kings pass and cities remain.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez