The book Arroyo Blanco: Churchill’s Cuban route by International Relations expert and researcher, Lourdes María Méndez, was launched at the Fayad Jamis book store, dealing with an almost unknown event in Cuban history, involving the future British leader.

The book narrates the time when young deputy lieutenant, Winston Churchill, by orders of the island’s Spanish Governor, Arsenio Martínez Campos, joins a powerful Spanish squadron located in the region of Sancti Spiritus in central Cuba, to face the recently initiated invasion to the West by the Cuban Liberation Army during the second independence
war against Spain.

The volume tells the story of how young Churchill arrived in Arroyo Blanco on November 27th, 1895; the reflections by the future statesman on what happened on November 30th there, when the Spanish military force, to which the young British soldier belonged, had to confront the powerful Cuban squad led by Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, a date in which Churchill turned 21 and has his baptism of fire.

According to Churchill, he had lived the most significant events in his life on the island at Arroyo Blanco, Sancti Spiritus, which are described in the book.