The history of Playa Ancón cannot be told apart from that of Trinidad, the colonial town to which it belongs and of which it is the beach. The Ancón Peninsula is the strip of Caribbean coast that closes off the Trinidad region to the south, in today's Sancti Spíritus province, and its story has been intertwined with that of that city since the Spanish conquest.
Trinidad was founded by the adelantado Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar around 1514, as one of the first towns established by the Spanish in Cuba (along with Baracoa, Bayamo, Santiago, Sancti Spíritus, Camagüey and Havana). Named Villa de la Santísima Trinidad, it rose near the south coast, in an area inhabited by native peoples and rich in resources. Its closeness to the sea gave it a natural outlet to the outside through the Ancón area and the future Casilda, its port.
In those early times, the region combined cattle ranching, smuggling and, later, the crop that would change its destiny: sugarcane. The coast of Ancón, with its bay and its outlet to the Caribbean, was from the start the point of contact of Trinidad with the sea, the maritime routes and the trade (legal and illegal) that marked much of its colonial history.
To understand the role of Ancón in history you have to look at Casilda, the port of Trinidad, located on the same bay, on the road toward the beach. Since colonial times, Casilda was the maritime gateway of the town: through it came the goods and, above all, went out the wealth of the region toward other ports of the Caribbean, of America and of Europe.
The Ancón Peninsula and the Casilda bay were, thus, the link between Trinidad and the world. In the centuries of the sugar boom, the sugar produced in the nearby Valley of the Sugar Mills came down to this port to be shipped. The movement of ships, goods and people made the coastal area a strategic point, also guarded against the threat of pirates and corsairs who prowled the Caribbean coasts.
While Casilda fulfilled the port and commercial function, the long white sand beach of the Ancón Peninsula remained a more natural coast, of fishing and passage to the sea. That combination —a historic port and a beach open to the Caribbean— still defines today the character of the area: Casilda keeps its air of a fishing village, and Ancón, its condition as a beach.
The great historical moment of Trinidad —and, by extension, of its coast— came with the sugar boom between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. In the nearby Valley of the Sugar Mills (Valle de San Luis), dozens of sugar mills made the region one of the most prosperous in Cuba. The great Trinidad families amassed fortunes with the production and export of sugar, and with that money they raised the mansions, churches and plazas that today make Trinidad a colonial jewel.
That prosperity rested on the forced labor of thousands of enslaved African people, who worked in the cane fields and the mills in extremely harsh conditions. The Valley of the Sugar Mills is today a testimony of that system: it keeps ruins of mills, estate houses and towers like that of Manaca Iznaga, associated with the surveillance of the enslaved workforce. The history of the region is inseparable from that reality of splendor and exploitation.
All that sugar needed to reach the sea, and it did so through the port of Casilda and the Ancón area. The coast was, therefore, part of the economic machinery of Trinidad sugar. When, from the mid-19th century, the region entered decline (because of competition, the wars of independence and the changes in the sugar industry), Trinidad was left as if frozen in time, which paradoxically allowed it to be preserved almost intact until today.
After the sugar decline, Trinidad remained on the margins of modern development during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, which preserved its colonial center almost unaltered. That isolation, which at the time was an economic misfortune, transformed over time into its greatest treasure: a colonial city frozen in time.
The recognition came in 1988, when UNESCO inscribed Trinidad and the Valley of the Sugar Mills on the World Heritage List, for the exceptional value of its colonial urban ensemble and its historic sugar landscape. The distinction consolidated Trinidad as one of the great tourist destinations of Cuba.
In that context, and with the boost of tourism on the island during the second half of the 20th century, nearby Playa Ancón was equipped with some hotels to take advantage of its white sand and its calm waters, becoming the go-to beach for the visitors of Trinidad. Thus, the old fishing and sea-outlet coast of the sugar town took on a new role: that of a resort that complements the visit to the colonial heritage. Today, Ancón and Casilda combine that tourist role with artisanal fishing, and they are part of the experience of discovering the historic heart of central Cuba.
Beyond the human history, Playa Ancón owes its appeal to a privileged geography. The peninsula looks out over the south-central coast of Cuba, on the Caribbean Sea, in an area of relatively calm and warm waters, sheltered and with coral reefs near the shore. That combination of white sand, turquoise sea and reefs made it the best beach on the south-central coast.
Off the peninsula, to the south, stretches an area of cays and coral shoals, among which stands out Cayo Blanco de Casilda, a small sandy cay surrounded by reefs that is one of the main destinations of the area's nautical excursions. Even farther south, in deeper waters, is the great archipelago of the Jardines de la Reina, one of the best-preserved marine areas in the Caribbean, famous among divers (though farther away and with restricted access).
This marine richness —reefs, colorful fish, coastal life— is the basis of the activities practiced today at Ancón: snorkeling from the beach, scuba diving and the catamaran outings to Cayo Blanco. The peninsula also keeps stretches of natural coast with vegetation and palm trees, which recall what this shoreline was like before the arrival of tourism. Nature and history join hands on this strip of sand that closes, facing the Caribbean, the story of the colonial town of Trinidad.