In the Arús Caraballo family house, possibly as a souvenir of the hotel.

2025.1

MAKER: Unknown; unmarked as to manufacturer. A hotel-supply room-key tag made for the Hotel Hanabanilla; the producing workshop is not identified. DATE / PERIOD: Not dated on the object. The Hotel Hanabanilla opened in July 1975, so the tag dates from 1975 or later; the style of an embossed acrylic key tag is consistent with the later 1970s–1980s. ORIGIN: Cuba — Hotel Hanabanilla, on the shore of Lake Hanabanilla in the Sierra del Escambray, Manicaragua municipality, Villa Clara province (central Cuba). Acquisition: acquired in Cuba.

MARKINGS / INSCRIPTIONS: "HOTEL HANABANILLA"; room number "213," with an adjacent earlier number struck through (illegible, renumbered to 213); a circular embossed logo/monogram at right (partly effaced). No maker's mark visible. Languages: Spanish/proper names ("Hotel Hanabanilla").

MATERIALS: Clear molded acrylic/Lucite tag with metallic (gold-tone) embossed/inlaid lettering. TECHNIQUES: Molded/cut clear plastic tag with hot-stamped or inlaid metallic lettering and an impressed circular logo. The cancelled/renumbered figure shows hand-correction of the room number.

Fair

This is a guest-room key fob from the Hotel Hanabanilla, a Cuban state tourism hotel on the shore of the artificial Lake Hanabanilla in the Sierra del Escambray, in the Manicaragua municipality of Villa Clara province, central Cuba. The hotel takes its name from Lake Hanabanilla, one of Cuba's largest artificial reservoirs, created by the Hanabanilla dam (built 1959–1963) in the Escambray (Guamuhaya) massif; the lake feeds what has been described as Cuba's largest hydroelectric generating station and sits in a mountainous nature area later promoted for freshwater bass fishing and trekking. The hotel itself was built in July 1975 as a 126-room lakeside facility, using a Cuban adaptation of a Soviet precast-concrete construction system — known locally as "Girón," after the Bay of Pigs locale — that was widely used in the 1970s to put up schools and hotels across the island. Set on the lake's edge in the Escambray and reached in part by water (the reservoir spills across the access road, so a boat figures in the approach), it became a base for interior nature tourism and lake fishing. It has since been refurbished and operates today under the state Islazul chain (current room counts are cited at roughly 125), continuing in the same nature-tourism role. The hotel's July 1975 opening sets the earliest possible date for this tag, which therefore belongs to its operating life from the mid-1970s onward; the room number "213" suits a multi-storey hotel of this size, and the struck-through, renumbered figure beside it records the tag being kept in service through a later room renumbering — the kind of make-do reuse seen across this material. As a souvenir/retained object, the key tag most likely came home with a guest after a stay — domestic tourism within Cuba being the natural context (the Hanabanilla was a popular interior-tourism and fishing destination). Acquisition is Cuban and the standing default applies; nothing points to an external channel.