Centro Asturiano de Tampa — Tampa, Florida

The Centro Asturiano de Tampa is a mutual aid society founded in Ybor City in 1902 by immigrants from Asturias, a province on the Bay of Biscay in northern Spain. Its clubhouse, a three-story building of yellow brick and stone, has stood at the corner of Palm and Nebraska Avenues since 1914. The Florida Division of Historical Resources lists the marker location as 1913 Nebraska Avenue and records that the building entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The Tampa society began as an overseas branch. The society's own history describes the Tampa club as a branch of the original Centro Asturiano established in Havana, Cuba. For its members it supplied a theater, a cantina, a library and classrooms, a gymnasium, and for most of the 20th century its own hospital, El Sanatorio del Centro Asturiano.

The answer starts in Havana rather than Tampa. According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, Spanish immigrants of the late 1880s were largely bachelors, or married men who came alone and sent for their families later, so many had no one to care for them if they became ill or unable to work. Cuba remained a Spanish possession until 1898, and Havana was the destination for many emigrants from Asturias. Spaniards there organized by home region, with centers for Galicia, Cataluna and Castilla, and on May 2, 1886, Asturians formed the Centro Asturiano de La Habana to provide medical assistance for the collective benefit of its members.

The cigar trade carried that model to Tampa. When cigar manufacturing moved to Ybor City, the society's history explains, a wave of immigration followed from Havana, where many of the newcomers had already worked in cigar factories, since entry from Cuba was less restricted than entry from Europe. In 1902 a group of 546 immigrants from the province of Asturias founded the Centro Asturiano de Tampa. The Tampa founders thus carried a Havana institution, already sixteen years old, across the Straits of Florida to Ybor City.

Regional identity set the club apart from the Spanish society that preceded it in Ybor City. The Centro Asturiano drew its name, its founders and its Havana parent from one corner of Spain, yet the 1998 state marker notes that its membership was open to all Latins, so the Tampa society was never limited to members born in Asturias.

Dues bought a package of services that covered much of a cigar worker's life outside the factory. The 1998 Florida Heritage marker, transcribed in the University of North Florida George Lansing Taylor collection, says the society met the recreational, social, educational and medical needs of its members, and that in an effort to broaden the concept of cooperative medicine it ran a hospital, El Sanatorio del Centro Asturiano, from 1905. That transcription gives 1990 as the year the sanatorium closed; the state marker database lists 1988.

Daily club life ran on other services. 83 Degrees Media reported in July 2024 that the Nebraska Avenue clubhouse had a cantina open seven days a week, a bank, medical care and a gym, and that its library served as an educational resource for immigrants, providing English and citizenship classes. The society's history adds a large gymnasium, a cantina for dominoes and chess, billiard tables and bowling alleys.

Membership was large at its height. 83 Degrees Media puts the peak at around 3,200 members, and reports that in 2024 the Centro Asturiano had just under 300, mostly legacy members whose families have belonged for generations. In the cantina, the same report notes, men once gathered over cafecito and dominoes and read the newspaper La Gaceta.

The present building is the third home of the Centro Asturiano. The society's history records that the club began in a two-room, wood-frame building on Seventh Avenue, then moved to a larger building at the corner of Palm and Nebraska. When fire destroyed that clubhouse, a three-story yellow brick and stone building was built in its place for $110,000. The history credits its design to the Tampa firm of Bonfoey and Elliott, and quotes the local paper of the day calling it the most beautiful building in the South.

The exterior on Nebraska Avenue is formal. The state marker describes the Centro Asturiano building as Neo-Classical, with stylized classical columns and a sweeping stone staircase leading to the main entrance, while the society describes Doric columns, round-arch windows and stone balustrades around the roof. Inside, the marker lists a grand theater, a ballroom, and a cantina with a 50-foot onyx bar.

Each floor had a role. According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, the second floor held offices for the club's directors, the library, educational rooms, a smoking room, a ladies' parlor and the theater with its balconies, and the Grand Ballroom on the third floor still has fourteen original mirrors. 83 Degrees Media reported in 2024 that the old gymnasium on Nebraska Avenue still held exercise equipment from the early 20th century, unused for about 50 years, which club leaders hoped might one day become a museum room.

The theater gave the Asturian society a reach well beyond its membership rolls. The marker text states that El Centro Asturiano quickly became the center of Spanish theater and opera, hosting some of the finest performers in the nation. Its stage specialized in the zarzuela, the Spanish form of musical theater.

The productions drew attention from Spain itself. According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, so many stars appeared on the Ybor City stage that the Spanish publication El Arte de Teatro sent a full-time writer to Tampa to cover productions. Among the international artists the society names is the Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona, who wrote 406 songs, including Malaguena. 83 Degrees Media adds that famous jazz musicians played the grand ballroom in the early 20th century and that a disco ball hung there in the 1970s.

The society survives as a nonprofit whose main task is the building. 83 Degrees Media reported in July 2024 that the Centro Asturiano's main mission as a registered nonprofit is to preserve the clubhouse, its culture and its legacy, and that it hosts wedding receptions, comedy shows, musicals, recitals, bingo nights and auctions to pay for upkeep. The same report described free community tours every Tuesday at 10 a.m. as of 2024, and a Wines of Spain fundraiser for restoration of the Nebraska Avenue building.

The building carries federal and state recognition. The marker transcription in the UNF collection gives its National Register number as 74000631 and shows the 1998 Florida Heritage marker, F-386, was sponsored by the City of Tampa, the Ybor City Development Corporation and the Florida Department of State. The society's records are part of the Tampa Bay Mutual Aid Society Collections at USF Libraries Special Collections, which hold a Centro Asturiano de Tampa Collection alongside the records of four other Ybor City societies.