On 26th November 1956 Castro and a group of fellow Cuban exiles set sail from Tuxpan in Mexico, aboard the yacht 'Granma', with the purpose of initiating a coup in Cuba. They went under the sobriquet 'The 26th of July Movement', named so after the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, an army facility in the city of Santiago de Cuba, on 26th July 1953.
The seditionaries landed at Playa Las Coloradas near the eastern city of Manzanillo on December 2, 1956. They immediately sustained a remorseless attack by the Cuban Air Force. Of the 82 that travelled only 15 survived. Forsaken and without food, they wandered for two days until they found sanctuary in the Sierra Maestra mountain range.
Among their number they counted Fidel and Raul Castro, Ernesto Guevara and a young man named Miguel. From their encampment in the mountains they began to wage a guerrilla war against the Batista government that would last the following two years.
Miguel turned out to be the proprietor of the location we were shooting the Paolo Nutini video at. He was such a hospitable, generous man; on wrap he invited the entire foreign contingent into his house and gave us each a cigar, a slug of his potent coconut rum moonshine, and a piece of florid tasting Persian nougat.
Here I am blazing a cigar with him:
And here's Nez proving that sometimes a cigar isn't enough:
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