In the middle of the mountainous massif of Topes de Collantes stands an imposing building. Today it is a hotel managed by the Armed Forces, but it has a dark history, beginning as a center to care for patients with tuberculosis until it became a huge prison where the insurgents who took up arms against the Government in the Escambray were held.
The center had the most modern medical technology of that time and had, among other things, a library, a study room and a theater room with capacity for 400 people. On the lower floors were the administration and management, as well as the refrigerator, kitchen and other services.
In the same way, the center was providing medical assistance to the residents of the region, who received 454,953 services, of which 13,785 were emergency and first aid homes.
By the end of 1958, the director's residence, twenty rooms for doctors, and two multi-family buildings (one for use by nurses and maids, and one for male staff) had been built as part of the projected "Ciudad Collantes", Dependents of the Autonomous Jurisdiction of Topes de Collantes (created by Law 1008 of August 6, 1953), in this six-year term closed in 1958, the Ancón Peninsula, the aqueduct and the Trinidad Civil Hospital, the Sanitary Unit Doctor of the Port of Casilda and the Antitubercular Colony "Luis Ortega Bolaños" in the province of Havana.
Then they began to use it first, to house and proceed with their political indoctrination the contingents of "Anton Makarenko" Masters in training, later to treat characters of the Regime suffering from respiratory disorders such as Che Guevara himself, in 1965, and with Over time, they have ended up forming part of the Topes de Collantes National Park, dedicated to the exploitation of "health tourism" for foreign tourists who pay for their stay in hard currency.
Today the Kurhotel Escambray is located there, which was rebuilt and adapted in 1985 for recuperative medical treatment for soldiers, family members and civilian personnel, to which was later added the incipient development of international nature tourism at the Los Helechos hotel, where service to Cubans in national currency.
29 мар 2022
