"My soul will wander eternally through Havana. It has been the best of my loves, the best of my passions, the greatest of my challenges," said the most faithful of Havanans, Eusebio Leal Spengler, who this Sunday, September 11, would fulfill 80 years old.

The Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, a place that held prestige for many years, develops multiple activities to revile the ideal of the Boyfriend of Havana, who bequeathed us his eternal and infinite love for Havana and for Cuba, to which several sometimes called #CubaPatriaAmada.

And it is that Eusebio was passionate about his time, a charismatic for his oratory, a profound student of our history, of our Heritage. In his interventions and speeches he always embraced the patriotic feeling, Eusebio was and is a Cuban patriot, who with his intellect traced a restorative work that has allowed our Island to have recognition beyond its own borders. He said of this in one of his speeches at the Round Table: "I don't belong to myself, my name is something else. It doesn't correspond to me. It really is looking for more problems for me, my name for everything it demands of me, that everything others. This is a work of the Nation, it is a work of Cuba, it is a work of the Revolution".

Eusebio Leal came into the world in the heart of the capital, at 660 Hospital Street in the Centro Habana municipality, on September 11, 1942. It can be described as self-taught, because at the age of 16, he began working in the municipal government where he reached the level sixth grade. Like other young people interested in history, he was welcomed by Emilio Roig d'Leushering and guided by him in his vocation.

Without having officially obtained a higher school level, and after some preparation, he took academic sufficiency exams at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana, which allowed him to enter that center of higher studies by Rectoral Decree to pursue a Bachelor's degree. in History in 1974. He finished his studies in 1979.

Endowed with a human sense and exceptional ethics, characterized by loyalty, honesty and exquisite trustworthiness, with his self-critical capacity he expressed:

“I don't aspire to anything, I don't even aspire to what they call posterity; I don't aspire to anything, I only aspire to have been useful. And I apologize to all those who, throughout life, in the necessary search for what I believed to be my truth, I may have offended; and to my own mistakes that I made with the youthful passion in which every man and every people seeks their own paths. I believe that in the end I found it, and that light that I see now, there, in the midst of the darkness of twilight, is finally the way”.

Many intellectuals were his collaborators, but there is a journalist who, in addition to being a faithful admirer of Leal's work, like a dreamy magician of these times, has a determined commitment to extol the life, the work, and the essence of being of Eusebio Leal : This is Magda Resik. In an interview published on Habana Radio, the station she directs at the request of Fidel and Leal, she stated:

–What do you most admire and appreciate about Eusebio?

It was a relationship of great respect, great admiration and love until the last day of his life, even near his deathbed; when he allowed me to see him in moments of weakness of body and soul, when the disease caused him immense pain and forced him to a fragility that was rarely allowed in his stoic way of facing life. He professed the Christian and revolutionary faith, which translated for him into being a Fidelista. He was no ordinary boss. His demands came from his own example. His leadership grew because he never demanded something that he was not capable of fulfilling and because few human beings could match him in culture, austerity and humility.

At the end of his life he repeated several times in public that I was a daughter to him, that he didn't need a cane if he leaned on my shoulder. You can imagine what pride and what commitment I feel daily for not disappointing him in the face of such deference, and how much I appreciate that a man as great as he has treated me like a daughter among the thousands who accompanied him in the world and profess infinite affection for him. Those gestures of his still move me to tears. But like him, I try not to make that weakness public because I miss him more every day; because Leal deserves all our strength, joy and commitment to continue developing together, with all his faithful collaborators and followers, that foundational work of infinite tenderness for Havana and for Cuba, his beloved homeland.

And what did the intellectual, loyal to his Havana and his Cuba, teach us in his walk through these lands? And Magda, resolute and knowing that she knows the cultured and beautiful man that Eusebio Leal is, tells us: Teach us the value of heritage, preach it as a doctrine and sacrifice even his health to rescue him. Havana is another after its existence. And also in the country he lit a flame of love to preserve what makes us proud, identifies and distinguishes us.

And there is already a group of Leales (loyals) to Leal in Havana, all over Cuba. In social networks, many magnify his "Walking Havana", his restorative sense, his defense of Heritage, his attachment to the history of Cuba with unimaginable edges, his humanity from the attention to a visitor of ancestry (such as the historic visit of the Prince of the United Kingdom, Carlos Tercero)

And his soul has always wandered through Havana, and as Magda affirms, wherever his soul is, it will illuminate that path of love for Cuban culture and history.

Thus we always remember him with love and respect for that man who contributed all of his being for Havana, for Cuba and his Heritage.

Autora: Maria Salomé Campanioni