Centro Asturiano de Tampa

The Centro Asturiano de Tampa is a mutual aid society that 546 immigrants from Asturias, Spain, founded in Ybor City in 1902 as a branch of the original Centro Asturiano in Havana.

Asturias is a province in northern Spain on the Bay of Biscay, and its emigrants reached Tampa through Cuba. The society's own history calls the Tampa club one of the city's first mutual aid societies. Its clubhouse, a three-story building of yellow brick and stone, stands at the corner of Palm and Nebraska Avenues, where the Florida Division of Historical Resources records that the society built it in 1914 after a fire destroyed the earlier clubhouse. The state lists the marker location as 1913 Nebraska Avenue and records the building's National Register listing in 1974.

Immigrants from Asturias formed their own Ybor City society because many had come to Tampa through Havana, where Asturians had already organized a mutual aid center in 1886.

According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, Spanish immigrants of the late 1880s were largely bachelors, or married men who came alone and sent for their families later, so many had no one to care for them if they became ill or unable to work. Cuba remained a Spanish possession until 1898, and Havana was the destination for many emigrants from Asturias. Spaniards there organized by home region, with centers for Galicia, Cataluna and Castilla, and on May 2, 1886, Asturians formed the Centro Asturiano de La Habana to provide medical assistance for the collective benefit of its members.

The cigar trade carried that model to Tampa. When the cigar industry came to Ybor City, the society's history explains, a wave of immigration followed from Havana, where many of the newcomers had already worked in cigar manufacturing, since immigration from Cuba was not as restricted as it was from Europe. In 1902 a group of 546 immigrants from the province of Asturias founded the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, carrying a Havana institution that was already sixteen years old across the Straits of Florida to Ybor City.

The Tampa society did not stay limited to Asturians. The state marker database says its membership was open to all Latins, while the 1998 marker text transcribed in the University of North Florida George Lansing Taylor collection reads open to all. Both versions describe a Nebraska Avenue club that reached well beyond one corner of Spain.

Membership in the Centro Asturiano covered members' recreational, social and medical needs, and the society ran its own hospital, El Sanatorio del Centro Asturiano.

The Florida Division of Historical Resources marker record says the club operated the hospital in an effort to broaden the concept of cooperative medicine. The two available versions of the marker differ in detail. The state database lists recreational, social and medical needs and gives the hospital's closing as 1988, while the UNF transcription of the marker in Tampa adds educational needs, says the sanatorium operated from 1905, and gives 1990 as the year it closed. This page reports both years rather than choosing one.

Club life filled the Nebraska Avenue building. The society history lists a large gymnasium, a cantina for dominoes and chess, billiard tables and bowling alleys, along with a library and educational rooms on the second floor. Families that have belonged to the Centro Asturiano for generations, the society adds, still speak of card games, dominoes and the galas held in the ballroom.

The 1914 clubhouse at Palm and Nebraska Avenues holds a grand theater, a ballroom and a cantina with a 50-foot onyx bar, according to the state marker.

The present building is the third home of the Centro Asturiano. The society history records that the club began in a two-room, wood-frame building on Seventh Avenue in Ybor City, then moved to an impressive new building at the corner of Palm and Nebraska as membership grew. When fire destroyed that clubhouse, a three-story yellow brick and stone building in the Renaissance Mediterranean style was built in its place for $110,000. The history credits the design to Bonfoey and Elliot and quotes the local paper of the day calling the club the most beautiful building in the South.

Sources describe the style in different words. The state marker calls the Centro Asturiano building Neo-Classical, with stylized classical columns and a sweeping stone staircase to the main entrance; the society describes Doric columns, round-arch windows and stone balustrades around the roof; and the National Park Service record for NRIS 74000631 lists Classical Revival and Beaux Arts, names the architect as F. Leo Elliot, and gives 1912 as the significant year, two years before the 1914 date on the marker.

Each floor had a role. According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, the second floor held offices for the club's directors, the library, educational rooms, a smoking room, a ladies' parlor and a theater with elegant balconies, and the Grand Ballroom on the third floor has fourteen original mirrors.

The Centro Asturiano became Tampa's stage for Spanish theater because its Ybor City theater quickly turned into the center of Spanish theater and opera, according to the marker.

The 1998 marker text states that El Centro Asturiano hosted some of the finest performers in the nation, and the state database version speaks of some of the finest opera performers in the nation. The stage specialized in zarzuelas, the Spanish form of musical theater.

The productions drew attention from Spain itself. According to the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, the theater's zarzuelas attracted so many stars that the Spanish publication El Arte de Teatro sent a full-time writer to Ybor City to cover productions. Among the international actors and artists the society names is the Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona, who wrote 406 songs, including the popular Malaguena.

Today the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that keeps its 1914 Ybor City clubhouse in use as a social club and event venue.

The society says the clubhouse hosts wedding receptions, comedy shows, musicals, recitals, bingo nights and auctions, and lists its address as 1913 N Nebraska Avenue, Tampa, with the phone number 813-229-2214. Its visitor FAQ notes complimentary parking for guests and a fully stocked bar during most events, and says the club does not serve food.

History tours of the Ybor City clubhouse are open to the public. The society's tours page offers a free history tour every Tuesday at 10 a.m. with advance sign up, lasting about an hour, and notes that it covers the history of the building rather than its event spaces; free venue tours are arranged by phone.

The building carries federal and state recognition. The society describes it as a designated heritage structure in the Ybor City Historic District, and the UNF collection shows that the 1998 Florida Heritage marker, F-386, was sponsored by the City of Tampa, the Ybor City Development Corporation and the Florida Department of State. The society's records form the Centro Asturiano de Tampa Collection in the Tampa Bay Mutual Aid Society Collections at USF Libraries Special Collections, alongside the records of four other Ybor City and Tampa societies.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the Centro Asturiano de Tampa history, tours and FAQ pages, the Florida DHR marker record, the UNF marker photograph record, NPS NPGallery entry 74000631 and the USF Libraries mutual aid collection page.