I first visited Tampa in 1990 to write a story about the city prior to its hosting Super Bowl XXV. At that point I had been in Florida a little over a year and I knew enough to begin my visit – as I began my story – in Ybor City, specifically at La Tropicana Café, more specifically at the table with the nameplate: RESERVED FOR ROLAND MANTEIGA. Manteiga was the editor of La Gaceta, which had been started by his father as a Spanish newspaper in 1922 and now claimed to be the only trilingual paper in the United States. (In addition to Spanish and English, it featured a column in Italian.)
I still remember sitting at that octagonal table, where Manteiga regularly held court, and hearing him talk about the imminent rebirth of Ybor City. Later, walking past the empty storefronts on East 7th Avenue, I had serious doubts. Subsequent visits, of course, have proved him right. But even as I was skeptical about the resurgence of Ybor City, I got a sense of its enduring spirit. A man behind the counter at S. Agliano & Sons Fish Co. (which closed its doors 15 years later) told me that, when he was in the army, people would ask him where he was from. “I always told them Ybor City,” he said. “Not Tampa. Ybor City.”
