El Floridita opened in 1817 with the name "La Piña de Plata" (The Silver Pineapple) in the place it still occupies, on the corner of Obispo and Monserrate streets. Almost 100 years later, the large number of North American tourists persuaded the owner to change the name to "El Florida", but with time it became popularly known as "El Floridita".
In 1914, the Catalan immigrant Constantino Ribalaigua Vert started working in the bar as cantinero (bartender). Constantino, nicknamed Constante, became the owner in 1918. Constante is credited for inventing the frozen daiquiri in the early 1930s, a drink that became linked to the fame of the place, whose motto is now "la cuna del daiquiri" (the cradle of the daiquiri). The bar became a school of highly skilled cantineros (bartenders) specialised in cocktails prepared with fresh fruit juices and rum, whose traditions are still preserved by the disciples of Constante.
The Nobel Prize-winning American writer Ernest Hemingway frequented the bar, which is at a short walk from the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway maintained a room from 1932–1939.
Hemingway wasn't the only famous customer of the bar. The establishment was frequented by many generations of Cuban and foreign intellectuals and artists, such as: Gary Cooper, Tennessee Williams, Marlene Dietrich, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgio Armani, Ornella Muti, Imanol Arias, Jean-Michel Jarre, Matt Dillon, Paco Rabanne, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, Pierce Brosnan, Naomi Campbell, Compay Segundo, Ana Belén, Víctor Manuel, os duques de Windsor Eduardo VIII e Wallis Simpson, Gene Tunney, Carlos Lombardía, Ava Gardner, Spencer Tracy, Rocky Marciano, Joaquín Sabina, Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, Javier Sotomayor, Kate Moss, Fito Páez, Danny Glover, Jack Nicholson, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos e Graham Greene.
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