Camagüey.- Outside, everything seems to be going too fast and too badly. There are days when tiredness clings to the skin and uncertainty becomes the landscape. But this Saturday, amid that tense and exhausting atmosphere, the Camagüey Fairgrounds opened its doors with the National Handicraft Fair, FENAR 2026… and inside there was a different scene.
There were visitors. There were lines. There were people looking, touching, asking, buying.
In the pavilions and also outside, under the tents, where at first glance everything might seem like a big flea market, a reseller’s market, a large-scale browsing event. But staying a little longer reveals something different: people who invest, create, sell, solve problems, and bet on moving forward.
Although household items and more industrial products remain noticeably present, the fair maintains the artisanal pulse that gives meaning to its name, now intertwined with new forms of entrepreneurship.
For Cheila Domenech, promotion and communication specialist at the Cuban Fund for Cultural Assets, FENAR is “an opportunity for a gift for a loved one, a detail to pamper someone dear, or to solve something at home.”
According to Seidel Toledo, director of the FCBC in Camagüey, 70 exhibitors from various provinces across the country are participating. In his words, the fair is “a meeting point for artisans, artists, entrepreneurs, and the public.”
Among the most popular stands are those dedicated to footwear. Dinorah Pacheco Sánchez, representative of creator Lázaro Becerra, says plainly: “Camagüey is a very good opportunity. The footwear is very good; Camagüey locals really like it.”
At Yasser Correa’s space, Dianet Acosta explains that each design starts from a simple idea: “We always look for comfort, and the lighter it is, the better.”
A little further on, the Ayabba bazaar smells of oils, soaps, and creams. Its representative, Anisleykis Francisco, admits that “FENAR is a challenge,” but also an opportunity to grow and renew.
And if the body asks for a break, there is always coffee. At Paladis, its manager Zoilanys León recalls that they have only been open for a year and that being at the fair is, above all, “to get to know the public better.”
Sustaining an event like FENAR is not simple: it involves organization, logistics, effort, setting up indoor and outdoor spaces, coordinating food offerings, creators, businesses, and the public. But it also involves something less visible: creating a place where people can meet, talk, look, compare, and decide.
FENAR will be open until February 13, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Thus, it becomes a showcase for entrepreneurship, new ways of making a living, for people who channel themselves into these paths of commercialization without completely giving up creation.
