November 11, 2022 – November 30, 2023
Ybor City Museum State Park |

The Ybor City Museum Society is presenting a special exhibit on Spanish immigration that will be on display through November 2023. The exhibit is based on a semi-fictitious book by Tampa native, Tony Carreño, entitled Following Fernando’s Footsteps: The Tale of Tampa’s “Invisible Immigrants, which chronicles the life of a young immigrant from Asturias, Spain to Tampa via Havana, Cuba.

Exhibit topics include the six phases of immigration beginning with departure from the homeland 1) Goodbye!/¡Adiós! followed by 2) Welcome. Now Get to Work!/Bienvenidos. ¡A trabajar!; 3) Living la Vida; 4) They Got Organized/Se Organizaron; 5) Solidarity and Strife / Solidaridad y Discordia; and 6) Made in USA.

The exhibit includes artifacts representing Tampa’s Spanish immigrants and excerpts from the book.

This project is tangentially and informally related to the successful archival exposition “Emigrantes Invisibles” by Dr. James Fernandez and Luis Argeo, which documents immigration from Spain to the USA between 1868 and 1945. It was presented in Madrid in early 2020, in Gijón in November, 2021, and is scheduled to tour several cities in southern Spain in 2023.

This exhibition and related programming are funded in part through a Florida Humanities Community Project Grant in partnership with the Ybor City Museum Society.

Our partner and venue:

Ybor City Museum State Park
1818 E 9th Ave
Tampa, FL 33605