When on that symbolic July 26th, 1982, in the Plaza de la Patria, in Bayamo, Fidel asked in his vibrant speech: "How could the history of Cuba be written without the history of Granma?," the answer was born right there, in reverse, precisely with another transcendental question: How could the history of Granma be written without talking about the presence of the Commander-in-Chief in this land?
By then, the leader of the Cuban Revolution was already considered a "son" of the territory, and the province was part of many of the vital scenarios in which he had written his living legend as a revolutionary, guerrilla chief and later leader of a socialist nation.
Fidel and Granma. Granma in Fidel. That was (and is) the essence of an endearing bond endorsed in his more than fifty visits (recorded) to the province, where he left an emotional and deep imprint, which still "beats" strongly in the collective memory of its people.
The anecdotes of journalists, photographers, farmers of the mountains, workers of the productive centers he visited, of the doctors and teachers who shared about patients and students in brief dialogues during his tours... of the workers of the industry and the furrow... and of thousands of Granma inhabitants who saw him giant and human in the public acts in which he spoke testify to it.
But that was later, in the new Cuba that, under his leadership, had been born with the luminous triumph of January 1959. Because before, long before, Fidel had been in Granma on several occasions. Several of them, as is well known, in decisive actions to channel the armed struggle.
A BELL, A HISTORY AND A LEADER
According to the historian of the city of Bayamo, Ludín Fonseca García -who carried out a research in which he reviews 56 visits of the historical leader of the Revolution to Granma, and three of them to preside over national events in commemoration of July 26th-, the first time that Fidel was in this province was in October 1947, when he arrived, by plane, to Manzanillo.
He came, as vice president of the Federation of University Students (FEU), to ask the City Council of Independence Veterans of the city of the Gulf (currently the municipal People's Power), the bell of La Demajagua, to use it in a rally on the steps of the University of Havana. Fidel was barely 20 years old.
That event would mark the birth of a historical bond of the then young student leader with a territory to which he would return many other times.
Precisely, in his political and military strategy to destroy Batista's dictatorship, Fidel would return to Granma after selecting the Bayamo barracks, next to the one in Santiago de Cuba, to start the armed struggle with the assault to those military enclaves on July 26, 1953. During the preparation of those actions, he went to the mines of Charco Redondo, in the Granma municipality of Jiguaní, where he became interested in the livelihood and the diseases suffered by those humble workers.
Under that same libertarian route, he disembarked along with 81 other expeditionaries in the Cayuelos de Niquero, in 1956, and then went up to the Sierra Maestra to lead a war that kept him in these lands for about two years, until the definitive triumph of the Revolution.
According to Aldo Daniel Naranjo, also a historian from Granma, "from those crests of the Sierra Maestra, in the middle of the anti-Batista war, Fidel complained about the impoverishment and ignorance of the peasant masses. That is why, in September 1958, contemplating the plains of Guacanayabo, with his eyes fixed on the area of El Caney de Las Mercedes, he announced: "When we triumph, we will build in the plains of El Caney a school city to educate 20,000 peasants' children."
And the leader would keep his promise. As he also fulfilled his promise to dignify the peasantry of the lomeríos, when on May 17, 1959, in the General Command of La Plata, he signed the Agrarian Reform Law. It had to be in Granma.
From then on, the Commander-in-Chief  maintained close ties with the province, which he visited more frequently in the early years of the Revolution.
According to historians, it has not yet been possible to define exactly the number of visits made by Fidel to Granma in that period, because there were no newspapers or other mechanisms created to record his visits.
However, from that foundational stage of the Revolution were marked for history his presence in the Caney de Las Mercedes, during the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, and the inauguration of the Camilo Cienfuegos School City, on July 26th, 1960; as well as his participation in the commemoration of the hundred years of struggle, in La Demajagua National Park, on October 10, 1868.
With his  presence was also inaugurated, on January 11, 1981, the Celia Sánchez Manduley Clinical-Surgical Hospital, in the city of Manzanillo, to commemorate the first year of the physical disappearance of the heroine.
FIDEL IN THE MEMORY OF A GRANMA INHABITANT
From the numerous journeys made by the Commander-in-Chief throughout the length and breadth of Granma, from the 1980s onwards, there are anecdotes, chronicles, interviews and photographs that reveal the affection and admiration that the people of Granma had for him, and the interest that the historic leader showed for the economic, social and cultural development of the territory.   
A few years ago, Rafael Martínez Arias (Felo), an outstanding photographer of La Demajagua newspaper, talked to this reporter about these experiences. He had the opportunity, in 1986, to record in images, during three intense days, the presence of the Commander in Granma.
"They were going to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the reunion of Fidel and Raúl in Cinco Palmas and they told me that a big personality was coming, that I had to look for an olive green suit; but when I saw that it was Fidel, I even got nervous," recalled Felo, who took one of the symbolic photos of the two brothers of blood and struggle, with their hands raised and united in the heart of the Sierra.
"I had time to take a single photo of him in public, Fidel and Raúl, and to have done that for me was the greatest thing in life. I don't even know how I approached that photo. I think it came out of pure feeling," added the multi-awarded photojournalist, after assuring that it was the first of many emotions experienced in his three days of work with the leader of the Revolution.
"Fidel was a tall and impressive man. When you had him in front of you, if you didn't tremble your eyes would water, but something was really happening. However, at the same time he was not so difficult to portray, because he was very pleasant, he laughed with the children, if there was a worker he shook hands with him... and he talked to people in a close way, that is to say, he gave news," he said.
Impregnated in the affection of the people, Fidel would be in Granma on other occasions, highlighting, among them, his presence in the Batalla de Guisa square, where thousands of Granma inhabitants received him on November 25, 2000, in an open tribune of the Revolution.
On July 26th, 2006, more than 100,000 people gathered in the Plaza de la Patria, in Bayamo, would also welcome the maximum Leader of the Revolution, who would make a public speech for the last time in this eastern territory.
There, when pronouncing the central words of the event, and as a physical and symbolic farewell to the land that saw him grow as a revolutionary, he said: "Yes, I will fight all my life, until the last second, while I have the use of reason, to do something good, to do something useful, because we have all learned to be better with each year that passes over us, all revolutionaries, and the human being is exalted when he does something for others."