CubaPLUS Magazine

So many years after her death, in 1978, Magdalena Menasse or The Russian of  Baracoa continues to be one of the unforgettable legends of that sort of corner of the world once the First City of Cuba at the time of Magdalena’s arrival, at the beginning of the 30s of the 20th century.

Today, transformed and promising, that terroir has her in mind. It is still transmitted by mouth’s word that the residents of that great world exporter of bananas that the town was at the time, many times saw the beautiful Magdalena as an apparition, surrounded by a halo and not precisely of holiness, when she walked through the town.

It was a light that seemed to emanate from her very white complexion, her blonde hair, white dresses, under the protection of an umbrella, also of the same color. She had arrived in Baracoa in the company of her husband, Albert Menasse, after making a journey that settled them for four years in Paris, where the woman shone as an opera singer on different prestigious stages.

Other European nations and Java were sites that preceded her arrival in Cuba, bound for an isolated point of its geography where, they were informed, an economic takeoff was taking place. That could not be farther from the truth. Legends say they left their native Russia, shortly after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution, as her husband was closely linked to Tsardom.

First she was a mysterious and intriguing figure, due to her aristocratic physique and demeanor, her excellent education -it is said she spoke six languages- and the stories she told or kept to herself. However, her naturalness, simplicity and generosity, made the residents of the small town look after her with sympathy and later love and value her even as a rare local jewel, of which they felt proud.

In 1952 they founded the Hotel Miramar, close to the beautiful horseshoe bay of the oldest city in Cuba, which is still in operation, renovated and with the name the town gave it: Hotel La Rusa de Baracoa. Without luxuries, but comfortable, it is a symbol of the history of the city in which illustrious personalities such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara stayed at the beginning of the Revolution, a process with which Magdalena did fully identify.

Having no biological children for health reasons, they adopted a nine-year-old boy named René Frómeta, who was always grateful for the warm and loving home the couple who had become his family gave them. For sure, no one knew why they stayed forever in Baracoa, coming from a world so different and perhaps with better auspices of progress.

It is said they were captivated by the dazzling nature of the place, which Magdalena loved deeply and which she called her homeland.