En la continuación de su serie de reportajes cubanos, The Independent se da una vuelta por el paladar “La Guarida” y destaca su revival —luego de estar cerrado más de un año:

Mr Nuñez, 42, who grew up in just two rooms on the third floor that are now dining rooms, found himself playing maitre d’ over the years to guests ranging from the King and Queen of Spain, Jack Nicholson and the Nobel author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The restaurant became a staple of every guidebook. If the royalty of Europe and Hollywood fell in love with it, so did the backpackers and the hipsters. But as the fame of the La Guarida grew, the conditions for Mr Nuñez – and for Cubans in general – worsened. The last decade saw a deterioration of Cuba’s economy and new waves of human-rights repression, notably in the black spring of 2003 when the government jailed 75 dissidents. The ill health of Mr Castro four years ago and the handover of control to his brother, Raul, sparked hopes of change but they dimmed quickly. Then came the arrest in the spring of 2009 of Juan Carlos Fernandez Garcia, a friend of Mr Nuñez who had opened his own paladar, El Huron Azul, which had achieved similar success. Both restaurants stretched the rules as far as they dared – more chairs, waiters whose claim to be family were hard to prove.
Mr Garcia went too far by hanging and selling art in his restaurant. The secret police confiscated everything, arrested him and put him in jail, where he would remain for a year.
“I took a trip to Madrid and took all my workers with me,” Mr Nuñez says. “When the holiday was over I gathered them together and told them I was not going to open La Guarida again, it’s over.” Mr Nuñez had decided he was no longer willing to live with the strain of state inspectors coming to the restaurant all the time and haggling and negotiating to avoid facing the fate of his then imprisoned friend. He decided relocate to Coral Gables, a prosperous outpost in Miami.
But in November, La Guarida reopened and is thriving again – for one reason.