Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant - Hardcover

by Wenceslao Gálvez Y. Delmonte (Author), Noel M. Smith (Translator), Noel M. Smith (Introduction by)

In 1896, Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte fled the violence of Cuba's war for independence and settled in Tampa. He soon made his new home the focus of a work of costumbrismo, the Spanish-language genre built on closely observing the everyday manners and customs of a place.

Translated here into English, Gálvez's narrative mixes evocative descriptions with charming commentary to bring to life the early Cuban exile communities in Ybor City and West Tampa. The writer's sharp eye finds the local characters, the barber shops and electric streetcars, the city landmarks and new Cuban enclaves. One day, Gálvez offers his thoughts on the pro-independence activities of community leaders like Martín Herrera and Fernando Figuerdo. On another, our exiled bourgeois intellectual author wryly recounts his new life as a door-to-door salesman and lector reading aloud to workers in a cigar factory.

This scholarly edition includes photographs and newspaper clippings, a foreword on Gálvez's extraordinary pre-exile years, extensive notes to the translation, and a wealth of other supplementary material putting the author's life and work in context.

Author Biography

Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte (1867-1951) was a Cuban-born baseball player, lawyer, and writer who chronicled the Cuban diaspora in the late nineteenth-century United States. Noel M. Smith, deputy director and curator of Latin American & Caribbean Art at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, has translated many books and exhibition catalogs. Andrew T. Huse (1973-2025), a librarian with the University of South Florida's Special Collections department, was the author of From Saloons to Steak Houses: A History of Tampa.