Provincia de Villa Clara, Cuba — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Provincia de Villa Clara known for?

Santa Clara is the province's main city. Villa Clara reaches from the Atlantic Ocean along its northern edge to the Escambray Mountain Range on its southern side, a range it shares with Cienfuegos Province and Sancti Spíritus Province. Other towns crowd the middle ground.

Remedios, Sagua La Grande, Caibarién, Camajuaní, Placetas, Ranchuelo and Manicaragua all count among the province's main cities, which spreads Villa Clara's life across a set of centres rather than concentrating it.

Where is Provincia de Villa Clara?

Villa Clara occupies the central region of the island of Cuba. Its northern boundary is the Atlantic Ocean. Matanzas Province lies to the west and Sancti Spíritus Province to the east, while Cienfuegos Province closes the province off to the south, so Villa Clara is hemmed by neighbours on three sides and by open water on the fourth.

The Escambray Mountain Range rises in the south. Villa Clara does not hold it alone, sharing the range with Cienfuegos Province and Sancti Spíritus Province, which makes the upland a boundary feature rather than a private one. Between the mountains and the ocean the province spreads its towns.

Santa Clara is the main city, and Remedios, Sagua La Grande, Caibarién, Camajuaní, Ranchuelo, Placetas and Manicaragua follow it on the list of Villa Clara's principal centres. That is a long list for one province. It leaves Villa Clara without the single dominant town that shapes many Cuban provinces, and a route across it touches several centres instead of running between two.

Spanish is the language across all of them. Villa Clara belongs to the Central Cuba grouping, the middle band of provinces the island's travel geography reads as one region, and it is among the more varied of them for holding both a mountain range and an ocean edge.

What is Provincia de Villa Clara like?

Spanish is spoken across Villa Clara. The province carries eight named cities, and the spread means no single one sets the tone for the rest, so Santa Clara, Remedios, Placetas and the others each keep their own weight in provincial life. Santa Clara is still the main one.

As the province's main city it holds the functions that follow that rank, while Sagua La Grande, Caibarién, Camajuaní, Ranchuelo and Manicaragua fill out a province described by a long list of centres rather than by one name. The list is the point. Two settings pull in opposite directions.

The Escambray Mountain Range gives Villa Clara an upland character along the boundary it shares with Cienfuegos Province and Sancti Spíritus Province, and the Atlantic Ocean gives it a coast on the other edge. The two edges are unlike each other. Between them the province's towns take their character from whichever is nearer, and Villa Clara reads differently depending on whether the approach is made from the mountains or from the water.

Central Cuba is the grouping it belongs to, sitting beside Sancti Spíritus Province in the middle band of the island, and travel across the two is normally planned together.

What is the history of Provincia de Villa Clara?

The names are all Spanish. Santa Clara, Remedios, Sagua La Grande, Caibarién and Placetas carry the naming pattern that runs across Cuba, and the province itself is named in the same language. Its borders were drawn against neighbours.

Matanzas Province, Sancti Spíritus Province and Cienfuegos Province each define one side of Villa Clara, and the Escambray Mountain Range it shares with the last two has kept that southern boundary a jointly held one.

What is the climate of Provincia de Villa Clara?

The Atlantic works on the north edge. Villa Clara lies within the tropics, open to the ocean along its northern boundary, so the sea air reaches inland across a province with no cold season to interrupt the year. The Escambray complicates that.

Height in the Escambray Mountain Range along the southern boundary pulls conditions away from what the province's Atlantic Ocean edge sees, so the two ends of Villa Clara rarely feel the same on a given day.

How do you get to Provincia de Villa Clara?

Santa Clara is the way in. As Villa Clara's main city it takes the arrivals, and journeys continue from there to Remedios, Caibarién, Placetas, Sagua La Grande and the rest of the province's centres. Neighbouring provinces frame the approach.

Matanzas Province lies on the western side and Sancti Spíritus Province on the eastern, so a route across Central Cuba passes through Villa Clara rather than ending in it, and Cienfuegos Province offers the way up from the south.