Born in the south of Germany, surrounded by the extraordinary landscapes of the Black Forest on the border with Switzerland, Annette Meisl, also known as Ana Galana, discovered her artistic gifts for writing and music from an early age, when she learned to play the violin and, at the age of ten, she published an article in a magazine specialized in horses.
After completing secondary education and overcoming her parent’s separation, Annette moved to the south of France, where she began her international artistic adventure with a brief stint in medicine; practice that bore no fruit.
Read in the magazine (rotate your device for better reading experience):
France was followed by Madrid, Spain, a city where she arrived without speaking the language and with an original itinerary of five days that turned into three years playing the violin in the streets and participating in films, musical groups and different projects, until she became in the administrator of a small theater called Damajuana.
During the eighties, a period of the post-Franco cultural movement called La Movida, she coincided with figures of the stature of Carlos Saura, Paco Rabal and the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. Then, after becoming an artist manager, she met her husband, a Spanish singer and guitarist, with whom she returned to Germany and formed a tango duo that enjoyed success, performing throughout the country.
On this tour she met the Cuban group Vieja Trova Santiaguera: “They had five members and together they were 400 years old!” she remembers jokingly. Annette’s first trip to Cuba was at the initiative of this group of experienced musicians, who showed her the World of Tobacco, from planting the plant to making cigars.
“All of this touched my heart… I started bringing musical groups to Europe, but since cigar making fascinated me, I also organized cigar rolling events with different cigar rollers. I would never have imagined that tobacco would develop such power over me. A shaman from Colombia told me the other day: ‘tobacco selects its people.’ And it did it with me,” Ana Galana says.
Five years after that first trip to Cuba, Annette created her own brand of cigars: La Galana; Ten years later she opened her tobacco shop and Lounge in Cologne, Germany, and after two decades she published a historical novel on the subject.
La Galana: femininity and tobacco
Ana Galana first idea for the name of the brand was La Gala, after the name of his Representation Agency and inspired by Gala Dalí, whom she considers an example to follow for her role as muse and representative of the artistic genius Salvador Dalí. “A woman crazy enough to deal with a genius, but smart enough to turn that genius into a lot of money and international success,” she thinks.
But since La Gala was already a registered brand, she took a second option: La Galana. Annette, a lover of the Spanish language and culture, found potential in this word as a reflection of an elegant, good-looking woman: “It was exciting to give such a feminine name to a product that would be consumed mainly by men, although I still want to convince “many more women to be part of the art of cigar smoking and at the same time be proud of their femininity, independence and wisdom of life.”
The Cuba-Germany connection
As if sent by the magic that the Shaman referred to, one day a great aunt whom she did not know appeared in her life. The woman gave her a suitcase full of documents and letters from his ancestors; texts in which she discovered stories that inspired the plot of The Secret of the Cigar Queen, her historical novel signed under the pseudonym Ana Galana.
In it she tells the story of Anna Mehringer, a young woman from Bremen, Germany, daughter of a family of cigar rollers who escapes from her home and after many adventures arrives at Cuba, where she is saved by the German cigar producer Hoffmann, but falls in love with Luca, a former slave.
The story takes place during Cuba’s first war of independence (1868-1878), and addresses topics such as slavery and colonialism, as well as the importance of the tobacco industry in Germany in those years. A tradition that no longer exists as such, but regains strength with La Galana. “I learned to make cigars from a master Cuban roller named Silvia, and then in different factories at Estelí, Nicaragua, and Danlí, Honduras,” she explains.
Annette says that her book is dedicated to women who live their dreams, especially in the World of Cigars, where it is necessary to increase the number of aficionadas, brand owners, directors, etc. A personal goal that coincides with the mission of the SOTL Global Movement, to which many contribute their knowledge, culture and passion.
The culture around cigars is so special, she adds, that it invites group collaboration to create an increasingly broader scenario. “And I’m sure all these men will also be very happy to welcome girl power!”
Regarding her music, she says that she is inspired by the style of the 1920s, a time of incredible women who, like Marlene Dietrich, began smoking cigarettes as a symbol of emancipation, against the deeply rooted belief that a lady shouldn’t smoke. “Let’s forget that and let’s smoke, have fun, meet wonderful people and enjoy special moments in these times in which we always live worried.” And she adds, jokingly, that it is time to create a new symbol, a bigger one: a cigar.
At the moment La Galana is only sold in Germany. To learn more about the brand visit the website https://lagalana.de and regarding Annette, as an author and singer, annettemeisl.com (Spanish) and annette-meisl.de (German and English).
You can also purchase the novel The Secret of the Cigar Queen in Spanish https://shorturl.at/ghiBE and in English https://shorturl.at/amH15
