The Ruins of the Havana Shopping Center Galerias de Paseo
Photo Feature by Idania Cardenas
HAVANA TIMES – The Havana shopping center Galerias de Paseo is located facing the Havana malecon and very close to the Melia Cohiba Hotel. Today it is completely in ruins, dirty, destroyed, with peeling paint, and without lighting at the entrance. Most people head to the dollarized state market (MLC) on the first floor. Walking through its aisles is a real challenge because you don’t know if it’s a market or a warehouse. All the store aisles are filled with merchandise that accumulates up to the entrance of the market itself.
For those who don’t want to climb the access ramp, where you can stumble upon merchandise and holes in the floor, there are also stairs with several broken steps on their edges that haven’t seen a broom in months, perhaps years.
The top floor of Galerias Paseo is its boutique store area, but even those supposedly glamorous locales do not escape the dirt and crisis of the environment. You hardly find any employees or customers, there are closed departments, people with little desire to work, little stimulus.
At the entrance, the security guard with the phone selecting music to entertain the few customers who visited the stores that day. At the exit, a colorful sign that says “Magic World” a place that a few years ago was a children’s store, now only sells basic products for people living in the area that are controlled by the ration card. There, each person can buy once a month in National Currency.
And so ends this tour of Galerias de Paseo, which was once a center where people could afford to go shopping and enjoy the journey, now turned into ruins.
I have an apartment in Vedado , and visit every 4 weeks, every visit there is more crumbling. I used to sit at the tables there, drink Buccaneros and vist while my wife shopped for groceries upstairs. That’s not possible today.
Like that place, there are hundreds in our country being destroyed because no one cares about them or takes them into account…. It’s a pity that they have already lost their glamour with the disappearance of the famous “cuc” that marked so many differences among us Cubans.. hotels.. motels… cafeterias… pizzerias… even Coppelia itself are victims of abandonment and disinterest…. Apparently, it’s the private businesses and the private sector that are the future rebirth of these places… “hopefully yes…. and hopefully not”
I agree with Trevor. I am a regular visit to Havana and stay not far from here. I too always check to see what is happening with the Jazz cafe. In its prime it was so much fun. I hope things improve for the wonderful people of Havana.
How sad it makes me feel to see how this place has gone to ruin. When i visit Havana, 3 or 4 times a year, i always visit to see if there is any movement in the old “JAZZ” restaurant/bar. I have very fond memories of early and late evenings spent in JAZZ having a meal or even just a drink, listening to the various sounds from the excellent musicians and artistes that performed there. It was a a place that you could just immerse in the atmosphere or watch the sunsets. As with many other places in Havana very sad to see the deterioration of such classic places