On August 17, 1870, Perucho Figueredo, the author of our national anthem, was assassinated in the prison of Santiago de Cuba.
The Bayamo anthem is the symbol of the Cuban nation, composed by Perucho Figueredo in August 1867.
It was originally called La Bayamesa, for having been composed and performed for the first time in Bayamo and in reference to the already known march of the Marseillaise of the French Revolution, which from afar had influenced the ideology of these precursors of the independence of Cuba.
On Thursday, June 11, 1868, in the Iglesia Mayor of Bayamo, during a solemn Te Deum on the occasion of the Corpus Christi festivities and in the presence of high personalities of the Spanish colonial government and a large number of faithful of the city, the notes of this hymn were heard publicly for the first time.
On October 10, 1868, the 10-year war began with the cry of Yara. On October 18, the insurgents attacked Bayamo and two days later, the capitulation of the Spanish forces was signed in that city. In honor of this victory on October 20, the National Culture Day is celebrated in Cuba. With the capture of Bayamo, this anthem became popular and from that moment on, the Cuban people took it as their call to fight in search of freedom for the homeland.
In accordance with Article 50 of Law No. 128 of 2019, the official letter is as follows:
Al combate corred, bayameses, que la patria os contempla orgullosa. No longer a glorious death, that dying for the patria es vivir.
En padlock vivir es vivir en afrenta y opprobio sumido. The clarity shows the sound. ¡A las armas, valientes, corred!
Stanzas deleted.
Originally, the anthem had six verses. The last four verses were excluded in 1902. Firstly because their content would have hurt the pride of the Spanish. In addition, it was not well seen that the words of the anthem of one nation did not respect another. No less important is the fact that it was too long compared to most anthems.
The four stanzas, which followed the previous ones, were:
No time; the feroces íberos son cobardes cual todo tirano no resisten al bravo cubano; para siempre su imperio cayó.
¡Cuba free! Ya España mature, su poder y su orgullo ¿do es ido? ¡Del clarín escuchad el sonido ¡¡a las arms!!, valientes, corred!
Contemplad our noses threesome contempladlos aellos ellos caídos, por cobardes huyeron vencidos: por valientes, sabemos triunfar!
¡Cuba free! we can grit the mountain with the terrible stamp. ¡Del clarín escuchad el sonido, ¡¡a las arms!!, valientes, corred!
Despite the fact that Perucho Figueredo composed music for the anthem, it was modified over time, as there was often no reference to the original score.
This led to the creation of different harmonizations, which differed more or less from the original. In 1983, the researcher and musicologist Odilio Urfé made a presentation to the National Assembly of Popular Power in which he proposed the current (and final) version of the anthem.
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