Centro Asturiano - Cemeteries

Cemeteries

Two cemeteries were established for members of the Centro Asturiano and their families. The "Old" Centro Asturiano Cemetery was established in 1904 after the cemetery land was donated for the club's use by the city of Tampa. The club had inquired about the possibility of buying the land but it remains owned and maintained by the city. It is located in the Ybor City neighborhood at 2504 E.21st Avenue (not in Tampa Heights, as was previously reported.) Among the 601 interred at the Old Centro Asturiano Cemetery is club founder Antonio Gonzales Prado, who was buried there in 1904.

In 1942 the much larger Centro Asturiano Memorial Park was established. It is located along Tampa's eastern border, just outside city limits and immediately north of the Grant Park neighborhood at 5400 East Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Here, over 2,300 deceased are buried or laid to rest in the mausoleum, which was added in 1970 and subsequently enlarged in 1998. Among them is U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez, who gave his own life to save fellow soldiers during the Korean War, a sacrifice for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Lopez's valor is remembered with several monuments, including a state nursing home, a military resupply ship, and a nearby Seffner school which are named in his honor, as well as an engraved memorial erected by the Centro Asturiano near the entrance to the Memorial Park Cemetery.