Cuba National Anthem

Key Facts

• 1. La Bayamesa explicitly urges listeners not to fear a glorious death, with the line 'to die for the homeland is to live' as its philosophical core.
• 2. The music was first played in public on June 11, 1868, at the Corpus Christi celebrations in Bayamo's main church, in front of the Spanish colonial authorities; it was played without words, which hid its call to arms.
• 3. On January 12, 1869, unable to hold the city against advancing Spanish reinforcements, the people of Bayamo set fire to it rather than surrender it; the fire destroyed every document of the anthem's original music.
• 4. The anthem has just two four-line stanzas and no chorus: the same two stanzas that the rebel newspaper El Cubano Libre printed on October 27, 1868.