In August 13th,1867, the Bayamo City Revolutionay Committee met in the house of the lawyer Pedro (Perucho) Figueredo, to                make the planes which must unlash the Cuban independence movement. Right there it was suggested to Figueredo himself to            compose “Our (Cuban) Marsellaise”. On the dawn of August 14th the revolutionary from Bayamo created the melody which  would         become the National Anthem of Cuba. It was named La Bayamesa (The Woman from Bayamo) as expression of its      revolutionary character and from the place where the Cuban rebelliousness was born.

   In May 8th, 1868, Figueredo asked to Manuel Muñoz Cedeño, musician, to orchestrate that march, epic chant far from religious  hymns; hymn of war and victory that should appeal to combat and exalt the motherland feeling. In June 11th, 1868 Figueredo made possible that it would be played in the Iglesia Mayor (Main Church) of Bayamo Fourteen months after being created the melody of the National Anthem of Cuba, Figueredo includes its letter.

In October 10th, 1868 the Revolution outbursted, and ten days later, October 20th, Bayamo City is seized by rebel forces. Amidst rebel troops happiness and bustle, mixed with the joyful crowd, side by side with Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and other patriots, and surrounded by the shouts demanding the lyrics of that hymn, Figueredo took out pencil and paper from his pocket and crossing a leg on his horse´s saddle, he wrote the lyrics that, handwritten, copy by copy, was sung for the first time by those met. From then on its notes presided each and every act of the independent movement, and has become an expression the patriotic character of the Cuban people.

(Source: Historia de Cuba, 1492-1898; formación y liberación de la nación / Eduardo Torres Cuevas y Oscar Loyola Vega. Ciudad de La Habana, Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 2002. 404 p., ilust.).