The pride of the people of Camagüey forces the telling of stories and legends that sometimes unusual, others very witty and sometimes with a halo of mystery, can collude to fill historians, testimonies, protagonists or simply heirs of the cultural memory of the city with passion.
Undoubtedly one of those exciting events that took place in the land of Camagüey that monopolized the information of the newspaper “El Camagüeyano” and other national media was the arrival on Sunday, June 11th, 1933 of the Cuatro Vientos plane at the aerodrome of our city, from Seville.
Who were the protagonists of such a feat of civil aviation?
The answers lead to the recognition of the experienced Spanish aviators Captain Mariano Barberán and Tros de Ilarduya – director of the Cuatro Vientos Observer School, and Lieutenant Joaquín Collar Serra, professor at the Alcalá de Henares Pilot School, who undertook the journey over the Atlantic Ocean on a route similar to that of Christopher Columbus four centuries earlier.
In this way, they became the first to cross the Atlantic through the widest part, setting a record for flying over the sea and demonstrating the feasibility of flying over the ocean and using innovative guidance systems for such purposes.
The other character in the story is the Cuatro Vientos plane itself – which fuel storage tanks were modified – to execute the largest non-stop flight of its time, it took off on June 9th, 1933 at 4:45 am. in Seville, arrives in Camagüey on June 11th around 3:30pm. along the San Juan de Puerto Rico – Guantánamo route, overcoming a distance of 7,895 kilometers.
Camagüey was filled with joy, the pilots between flashes of the cameras and interviews in the old Hotel Camagüey, are entertained by the people, Spanish companies and local authorities. The City Council declares them Adoptive Children of the City.
The next day they left for Havana, where they were received and honored as heroes at the Columbia Airport where they stayed until the 20th. Among the cheers of the public that attended the farewell, authorities and escorted by the public force, they march to a new destination: Mexico.
However, the news shakes the world and almost nine decades after the event, the mystery still surrounds the story, the plane never reached its destination. Quickly, the Mexican authorities begin the search in more than 300,000 km², it was all in vain.
The incident has been the subject of several versions, some far-fetched, others highly probable. The most accepted is that the plane must have fallen into the sea, the discovery in Chiltepec of a plane tire, which was sent to the Spanish Consul and recognized by the mechanic Madariaga, is perhaps the closest evidence to this hypothesis.
Today, the obelisk erected on January 12th, 1941, located in the Enrique José Varona park, where the faces of the pilots stand out, and the plaque unveiled in 2008, in the Ignacio Agramonte Provincial Museum, former Hotel Camagüey, which recalls the place where the aviators stayed, they perpetuate in the memory of the Legendary Camagüey the aeronautical feat that took place in their homeland.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
