It was the third village founded by Diego Velázquez and its history since then is one of the oldest in Cuba. At the end of 1513 there was the first contact between Spaniards and aborigines that has historical news in this region. On December 23 of that year Diego Velázquez, who had the intention of founding a village on the banks of the Arimao river, arrived with 20 men at the mouth of the Guarabo river, climbed upstream and found an aboriginal settlement, visited the village named for him Manzanilla and that in the old maps appears with the place-name Macuala. In this place was held the first Catholic Mass that knew the region, which was the main protagonist the priest Fray Juan de Tesín, who was accompanying Adelantado Diego Velázquez, as a clergyman at that time. The foundation of the third village occurred shortly after in the planned area.

Geography in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba

Located in the central southern portion of the province, bordered to the north by the municipalities of Jatibonico, Taguasco, Cabaiguán and Fomento; to the east by Jatibonico and La Sierpe; the Caribbean Sea to the south and to the west by the municipalities of Trinidad and Fomento respectively. The territorial extension is 1 142,20 km², with a population density of 124.2 hab/km².

Founded in 1514 on the western bank of the Tuinucú River, in the indigenous territory of Magón, an aboriginal word that means "country that has no end", the city then moved to the banks of the Yayabo River. This name was kept by its chief. Sancti Spíritus or Holy Spirits was the original name given to this village by the Spanish colonizers, to exalt one of the figures of the Holy Trinity, being the fourth among the first seven villas founded on the Island and the only one with a Latin name.

The villa was moved to the banks of the Yayabo River in 1522, about two leagues from its original seat, where it settled definitively. After its transfer to the banks of the Yayabo River, a slow but sustained process of growth and development of the jurisdiction began, starting with the development of livestock as the main source of wealth.