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Eva Canel (January 30th, 1857; Coaña, Asturias, Spain - May 2nd, 1932; Havana, Cuba) was a Spanish playwright, novelist, and one of the first female Hispanic journalists. She was a prolific writer and speaker and largely addressed political and feminist topics - she was specifically vocal on matters concerning marriage, the breakdown of customs, divorce, adultery, and incestuous relationships. Canel published many notable works including the novels: Trapitos al sol (1891); Manolín (1891); La pola (1893); Oremus (1893); and El agua turbia (1899), as well as several works of theater, including La mulata (1893) and El indiano (1894), which both concerned matters of race, and Fuera de la ley (1902) and La Abuelita (1905). She also often wrote in mixed literary forms, blending travel narratives, journalistic writing, and the autobiographical. Canel has contemporarily been described as “very daring for a woman of the era” in terms of the way she lived her life and the subjects she wrote about (Vallejo 107).

Agar Eva Infanzón Canel, whose pen name would become Eva Canel, was born to a fairly privileged family. At age three, her father, who was a doctor, was killed and she moved to Madrid with her mother. In Madrid, while trying to forge a career as an actress, she met and married actor and author Eloy Perillán Bux at age fourteen, and later had her only son: Eloy. In 1874, Canel’s husband was forced to leave Spain because he was attracting attention for his subversive writings and she leaped in to assume his editorial responsibilities for the satirical magazine, La Broma. Shortly thereafter, Canel joined her husband and traveled the theater circuit with him, living in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru – all the while writing, publishing, and even founding newspapers. In 1881, due to political upheaval in multiple South American counties, the couple decided to return to Spain and settled in Barcelona. Canel’s husband, however, soon became unsettled in Barcelona and their perpetually rocky marriage finally led him to settle in Cuba, where he died in 1889. She, too, left for Cuba shortly after the death of her husband.

Once in Cuba, Canel tried to find journalistic work but was refused job opportunities because of her gender; therefore, she founded her own weekly magazine – political satire in genre – called La Cotorra. After a period of eight years, during which time the Cuban War of Independence ended, she left Cuba for Spain and then on to Buenos Aires, where her literary peak began. Canel’s strong beliefs were reflected in her literary works; she was a Catholic traditionalist, monarchist, and all-around conservative, who ardently defended Spanish colonial power in Cuba and the Americas more broadly. One of the many paradoxical things about her is that she did not believe in divorce and felt that women should be subservient and occupy domestic roles, yet her life as an independent, outspoken woman who traveled widely while writing freely and supporting herself is in complete contention with the views she expressed in print. Vallejo explains that her relative obscurity in comparison to her sheer volume of literary production is in part due the unconventional way she lived for a woman of her era: “Eva Canel’s omission from serious critical study is compounded by the fact that she lived in many different places and wrote under several different pseudonyms; thus, she has not been recognized as any “national” writer—a circumstance that is hugely ironic, as she was a lifelong, proud Spanish nationalist and conservative monarchist” (107-108).

By the last few years of her life, Canel had established herself as a defender of Spanish interests and was called upon to hold conferences and give speeches on such themes. In 1914, while travelling around Central America to deliver speeches, her health began to suffer greatly. Invited by a former friend, she decided to return once again to Cuba where she lived until her death on May 2, 1932. Canel recorded the details of her extraordinary life in two memoirs: Por la justicia y por España (1909) and Lo que vi en Cuba (1916).

Margarita Cano is an artist and librarian born in Havana, Cuba on February 27, 1932 to Rafael Fernández Ruenes, an architect, and Margarita Villaurrutia Suarez. Cano attended the Ruston Academy, a bilingual American school in Havana, and earned degrees in physics and chemistry from the University of Havana in 1956. She worked at the Havana National Museum and at the Julio Lobo Napoleon Museum and obtained a Master of Library Science (MLIS) from the University of Havana in 1961. Cano migrated to the U.S. in October of 1962 and settled in Miami, Florida with her family. When she arrived in Miami, she recalled in a 2019 interview, the city was still lacking in cultural events and institutions, that there were only three art museums, and no full seasons of ballet or opera performances. This was all to change in the following decades and Cano played a large role in the city’s cultural development.

Cano worked at the Miami-Dade Public Library as a Community Relations and Art Services Coordinator for 29 years. She organized arts programs that highlighted the work of African-American and Cuban-American artists. Her efforts resulted in the establishment of a substantial, permanent art collection at the library. In 1977, Cano acted as project coordinator and organized the first exhibition of works by the CINTAS fellows at Miami-Dade Public Libraries. The show exhibited 57 pieces by Cuban artists living in the United States, as well as Spain, France, Puerto Rico and Colombia. Cano was also instrumental in organizing the 1983 exhibition “Nine Cuban-American Artists, The Miami Generation,” which traveled to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, while she was serving on the board of directors of the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture. Cano was also part of the group that founded the now renowned Miami Book Fair.

Cano’s son Pablo Cano (b.1961), a prominent Miami-based artist, cites his mother and father Pablo Cano, a musician, as inspiration for his career in the arts. His large post-Byzatine style painting, Saint Sebastiana, was shown at “The Miami Generation'' exhibition. He also was a CINTAS fellow in visual arts from 1983-84. His work is housed in several permanent collections, including at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum.

Upon her retirement in 1993, her art practice became more than just an enjoyable hobby. She began developing a unique art style, painting portraits of family and religious figures like virgins, saints, angels and archangels, memories of Cuba, still life paintings, and landscapes, and creating hundreds of unique artist books based on the medieval Illuminated Manuscripts such as The Book of Hours. She says: "My paintings are a window into a dream world of memories which are unattainable but become alive in my pictorial narratives. With metaphors and allegories I retell the story of Cuba so close to us and yet so far away. I will continue my quest in pursuit of a happy closure to this never ending saga." Her works have also been described as “creating interaction between the sacred and the mundane” and “creating tension between surface ornamentation and three-dimensionality is enhanced by the rich jewel-like finish that belies the presence of the brush, which strengthens the narrative content of the work.” And that, “it is in the storytelling that Cano invites the viewer to partake of her memory and her magic.” Cano’s works have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions including “Dreaming Cuba” at the Gallery of the Eccentric in Coral Gables in 1993, “Visions And Definitions” at Cultural Resource Center in Miami in 1998, “Transcending Exile” at the Coral Gables Library in 2003, “Cuba-Paradise Lost” at Books and Books in Coral Gables and the Connors Rosato Gallery in New York in 2005, “Memories and Metaphors” at Oñate Fine Art in Miami in 2006, “Images and Memories” at Cremata Fine Art in Miami in 2007, “Divine Presence/ Presencia Divina” at Viota Gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2008, and “Explorations” at Miami Dade Public Library Main Library in 2016. Her work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions in South Florida and Puerto Rico including at the University of Miami Libraries. In her artist statement, Cano writes: “My Cuban roots are reflected in my art work. It tells and retells my personal vision of Cuba. Installations of my painting visually narrate the Cuban drama: an island frozen in time surrounded by a seawall where Cubans wait for change. I document this quest for democracy and freedom through allegories and metaphors.”

In 2009, Cano was honored for her role in establishing a permanent, major art collection of Cuban American art for the Miami-Dade Public Library system and for her participation on the Board of CINTAS and commitment to the foundation for more than three decades. Hortensia Sampedro, the President of the CINTAS Board, said: “Margarita Cano has dedicated her life to the arts and has worked selflessly for the benefit of Cuban artists… in promoting the fellowships and the works of art of the fellows in numerous exhibitions.”

She is the author and illustrator of books for children, including Isabel y Su Cama Nueva (2014) and Isabel y Su Gato Coco (2008) and stresses the importance of children’s literacy and creative expression.

Most recently, in 2019 Cano’s artists books have been displayed in exhibitions at LNS Gallery in Miami as part of the “Artful Book 2019” as well as at the “Spheres of Meaning: An Exhibition of Artist Books” at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University.