Cuban hotel boasts Hemingway connection

By Yeny Garcia Havana — Room 511 at the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Old Havana remains a landmark of Ernest Hemingway’s stay in Cuba, but little is known outside the island about his days in the establishment run by the Galician immigrant Manolo Asper, who became a great friend and confidant of the writer.

The years when his Nobel Prize graced the small family-run hotel have been overshadowed by the seductive mysticism of Finca Vigia - the mansion outside the capital where Hemingway (1899-1961) spent his last 20 years - something that one of Asper’s nephews hopes to change very soon.

“I didn’t start this research because I’m a Hemingway addict. I started it because it was my family’s hotel and because my dad lived there,” EFE was told by Spanish journalist Pablo Lopez, who has dedicated almost two years to compiling documents and testimonies about those days back in the 1930s.

Lopez, who has just returned to Havana to take part in the seminar dedicated to the author of “The Old Man and the Sea,” said that during his stay at Ambos Mundos, Hemingway wrote “works like ‘To Have and Have Not’ (1937), ‘Green Hills of Africa’ (1935) and several articles for Esquire magazine.”

In “Marlin off the Morro: A Cuban Letter,” published by Esquire in 1933, Hemingway described his day, starting with the view from his favorite room at Ambos Mundos, which looked out “to the north, over the old cathedral, the entrance to the harbor, and the sea, and to the east to Casablanca peninsula, the roofs of all houses in between and the width of the harbor.”

“What nobody realizes is the true friendship that existed between Hemingway and Manolo Asper. I don’t know why, but that like other moments and friendships in his life has been lost in the shadows,” said Lopez, who simplifies the complicated degrees of his relations - Manolo Asper was the cousin of his father - and he calls the Galician hotelier uncle.

It was an anecdote, discovered in one of the letters from Hemingway to his editor Max Perkins, preserved in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, that led Lopez to become even more interested in that bit of family history and continue the research that is now quite far along, though he doesn’t yet know whether it will be better as a book or a documentary.

“It’s a very pleasant letter from the year 1940 when the first thing he (Hemingway) does is tell him (Perkins) ‘Here is your regular Sunday hangover letter...will you send me a check for $1,500? Please make it out to Manolo Asper,’” Lopez said.

Natives of Chantada in Lugo, Galicia, the family of Manolo Asper immigrated to Cuba in the early 20th century, and like thousands of Spaniards on the island, they started managing various businesses.

In 1924, “one of the sons started a hotel and soon afterwards Hemingway showed up,” Lopez said.

The Ambos Mundos, located at the busy Old Havana intersection of Obispo and Mercaderes streets, has a privileged location near the port and at the heart of the city’s business district.

For Hemingway it had other advantages: it was very close to El Floridita, La Bodeguita del Medio and Sloppy Joe’s, his favorite bars, and near the dock where he kept the boat he used to go fishing almost every day.

Asper, thrilled to host his illustrious guest, who preferred the small hotel to the luxurious Sevilla, gave him discounts on the price of his room because Hemingway’s presence attracted tourists and other big names in literature like John Dos Passos and F. Scott Fitzgerald, friends of the writer.