La Giraldilla, the symbol of Havana

A slender, challenging and at the same time serene woman is the oldest symbol of Havana and the first sculpture cast in Cuba. It is known as the Giraldilla and is located in the Castillo de la Real Fuerza Museum in Old Havana.

The Giraldilla was designed in the form of a weather vane. It is the figure of a woman who holds in her right hand a palm, of which only the trunk is conserved, and on her left, an antler with the Cross of Calatrava, order to which the governor and the GeneralCaptain of the Island Juan Bitrian and Viamontes belonged. It was precisely he who ordered to make it between 1630 and 1634, very similar to the one located in the Cathedral of Seville, Spain, called Giralda. That's why the name of Giraldilla. It was his tribute to the Spanish sculpture located in his hometown.

It is 110 centimeters high, it has a medallion on the chest with the name of the author -JerónimoMartínezPinzón- and it goes with the skirt gathered on his right thigh.

Initially, it was located in one of the towers of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza Museum, a few steps from the place where Havana was definitively founded. Unfortunately, the hurricane that hit the city on October 20, 1926, ripped it from its pedestal, which would later be replaced.

In the 1960s, to preserve it from environmental inclemency, the sculptor HipólitoNodarse made a replica, and the original was moved to the National Museum of Fine Arts.

From 1986, the original sculpture was exhibited in the City’s Museum, in front of the Plaza de Armas, until April 2008, when it returned to the Royal Force as a collector's item. Thus, the original is at the entrance of the Museum and the other is placed in one of the towers.

Like all good sculpture, La Giraldilla also has its legend. According to the popular voice, his sculptor was inspired by the love story between the seventh governor in Cuba, Hernando de Soto and Isabel de Bobadilla. The story says that he went to unknown lands in search of the fountain of eternal youth and she stayed waiting for him. He never came back and from the top of a tower she waited each evening for the return of his beloved. However, later investigations confirm that she died 20 years later in Spain with the fortune she had accumulated in Havana.

It is La Giraldilla, an emblematic symbol of Havana, that marvel city that is about to reach its 500th anniversary in 2019.