Excelencias Group Presents Multimedia Magazine Dedicated to the Caribbean Fire Festival

Santiago de Cuba, which is making preps to celebrate its 500th anniversary in 2015, hosted the launch of issue 124 of the Excelencias Group’s flagship magazine in digital format in a ceremony held Sunday within the framework of the Fire Festival in Santiago de Cuba, featuring Suriname as the guest country.

Mr. José Carlos Santiago, president and editor-in-chief of the Excelencias Group, together with architect Omar Lopez, Curator of the City of Santiago de Cuba, made the presentation of this high-quality publication, which also proposes a special section dedicated to the five centuries of Sancti Spiritus and pays tribute to the late Juan Formell. The issue also delves into the peculiarities of medicine in the Caribbean, and brings up the highlights of Nicaragua, Santo Domingo and Panama as top travel destinations.

The presentation took place at the Office of the Curator, an emblematic institution that harks back to 1722 and which once hosted the first higher education institution in Cuba.

Hendrik Herrenberg, Chief of Staff of the President of the Republic of Suriname; Lazaro Exposito, first secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party in the province; Reinaldo Garcia Zapata, president of the local assembly of the People's Power; HE. Julio Solis A. Ferrero, Ambassador of Cuba to Suriname attended the presentation.

To express the appreciation of Santiago de Cuba with the new magazine issue, Omar Lopez took the floor to refer to the pride of the local population in organizing the festival, "which is a symbol of peace, love, joy, from a city that has something to say, always embracing."

For his part, Mr. Jose Carlos de Santiago, also Ambassador of the Iberian-American Gastronomy Academy, recalled that Santiago de Cuba is "a land that surprises us with its beauty, the warmth of its people and their courage to live each day. One is astonished to see how they have managed to transform a city that was devastated by a hurricane and show it to us in all its glory all over again.

"This town is fierce, and it has shown this in its history, and that brave heart dazzles us. It echoes those feelings in this magazine, which brings up all those charms which will be higher when you reach your 500th birthday.

That already works and Excelencias Group, which was the first to come and offer your feedback, will be there," said Jose Carlos de Santiago before presenting the digital multimedia-journal dedicated to the 2014 Fire Festival.

This initiative, he said, will let the world in on the singularities of this land and its people, an effort which is not possible with the magazine and its limited amount of copies that each and every issue provides.

So, netizens may be more aware of the work of the Casa del Caribe, the artistic work and the job of the Alberto Lescay Caguayo Foundation for Monumental and Applied Arts.

He also announced that soon Excelencias Group will present the draft of the magazine’s special multimedia and digital campaign dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the city of Santiago de Cuba, to be observed in July 2015.