My last full day in Havana started at around 4 a.m. with a very obvious lack of electricity.

Rolling blackouts are not exactly uncommon in Cuba these days, but I have only personally experienced four of them—so far, anyway—and each of those had lasted for no more than two hours before power is restored. Of course, without power you can’t have any sort of internet connection, so I did what work I could while sitting in the dark listening to the traffic rolling by on the Malecón just outside the open patio doors.

With the Gala Dinner looming, the internet outage was more than a small inconvenience, but I did what work I could before deciding to go out and visit the press office in downtown Havana in order to thank the people there for their help in the process that it took for me to get my journalist visa to Cuba.

On the way back from that I stopped at the Cervecería Antiguo Almacen de la Madera y el Tabaco, a restored warehouse overlooking Havana Bay that was used as the location for one of the Festival dinners in 2016 and 2019. Although it used to house one of the few brewpubs in Cuba, it is now a marketplace full of individual stalls where vendors sell carvings, teeshirts and other assorted trinkets.

After I got back to the condo and realized the power was still out, I decided to do some more work and get ready for the final event of the Habanos Festival: the Gala Dinner.

This year’s Gala was being used to commemorate the introduction of a new regular production Partagás named Línea Maestra. As has been the case every year I have covered the Festival, the final dinner was being held at the PABEXPO Center, an indoor facility that is significantly larger and noticeably nicer than those used for any other events held during the week. The layout is always massive, and this year there were 10-top tables as far as the eyes could see, along with one huge main stage and at least three satellite stages scattered throughout the room.

I had made arrangements to get to the Gala a bit early to see if I could get photographs of the humidors being auctioned off before the doors officially opened and before they were swarmed by attendees. When I got to the PABEXPO Center, there were the normal people rushing around taking care of last-minute details, but nothing was all that unusual, so I walked right in the doors and started photographing the humidors. That took about 45 minutes or so, and when I was done, I sat down to fix the photographs and send some information on the contents of each humidor to Charlie, who was writing the actual post.

However, around that time I received a text telling me that the Gala Dinner would be attended by none other than Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who had shown up at the opening ceremony of the Festival four days prior. This put me in somewhat of a dilemma: although I had not seen any Secret Service-type guards standing around when I had originally walked in, I knew that they would be outside the building by this point since it was basically time for the event to start. Having photographed Presidential events in the past—albeit a long, long time ago—when I was a newspaper photojournalist, I also knew that if those same security members found out there was someone inside who had not been checked out and who was carrying a whole bunch of electronic equipment that had not been searched, things would probably not go well for me.

With that in mind, I found one of the Habanos S.A. media team and asked them to see if I needed to go outside to get screened before the event actually began. I was not surprised in the slightest when it turned out that was exactly what needed to be done, so I followed a member to a trailer in the back of the complex where my equipment was searched by both dogs and humans.

After that process was completed, I was allowed back inside the room, where I began photographing details and people milling around. It was then that I was told that because of the heightened security due to the President’s presence, I would be unable to move from my table at the back of the room for pretty much the entirety of the night. This was a shocking change to how things were usually handled since there are things going on all over the room all night long that I have typically been able to cover and photograph at will.

Upon learning that, I made my way to my table, where yet another shock awaited me. I had left my rolling camera bag at my table while I went about 20 feet away to photograph some things, and it turned out that the President’s security detail had taken it and everything in it. That included not only my laptop but also a flash, three additional—and fairly expensive—lenses as well as a few other assorted odds and ends. Perturbed, I approached one of the security detail and asked for the bag back, making it clear to them that it had already been cleared and that it had not left the building since that point.

Of course, I knew that everyone was just doing their jobs and at every point, they treated me (and others that I saw them talking to) with the utmost respect and courtesy. I was also extremely thankful for the fact that—unlike in years past—I was one of only four journalists allowed to actually be on the floor where the gala was taking place, as all of the other journalists were relegated to platforms at the far ends of the room for almost the entire night.

The program started with various dancing numbers, including some couples on roller skates that performed some routines that I am sure took quite a bit of practice to get exactly right.

After that, a group of dancers with lit tubes began the long journey from the back of the room to the main stage. A closer inspection showed that the main dancer held a box of the new Partagás Línea Maestra and she was being carried to the main stage, where she handed it over to the presenters there.

The program was about halfway over by the time I got my bag back, which did allow me enough time—barely—to get all of the work done for the humidor auction post to go live when it needed to. I was also allowed to leave my table for a few moments which meant I could get some different angles for my photographs at the end of the night.

After the last humidor was auctioned off—the Cohiba humidor is amazing to see in person, especially the detail of the head on top—you can read all about the record-setting prices here—we finally left the event, getting back to the condo around 1 in the morning. Knowing I was going to have a long day traveling the next day, I stayed up for a while and packed up cameras, computers, clothes and other assorted items before finally going to bed around 3 a.m. with my alarm set to go off four hours later.

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.