Procigar 2026 Day Three – Power Talk

It’s no surprise that the most used word at Procigar 2026 is “pasión.” There’s a lot of passion here. It couldn’t be any other way. The festival’s central activities are the tours, where manufacturers open their homes to all attendees to share the passion they feel. They show them their tobacco fields, their processing plants, their factories, and the entire long and complicated journey that tobacco takes, from seed to packaging. At the end of the day, the name of their family, their honor, and the legacy they inherited from their parents, which they will pass on to their children in the future, is imprinted on it. This requires passion.

A good example of that passion is the Power Talk, another new activity in the Procigar 2026 program that seeks to reinvent itself each year. The format isn’t very complicated, but it’s a formula for success: Litto Gómez, from La Flor Dominicana, and Carlito Fuente, from Arturo Fuente, face to face with a microphone, surrounded by tobacco passionados. Nothing bad can happen.

The event took place in the cigar lounge created by Arturo Fuente at the Santiago by Curio Collection hotel, in collaboration with The Glenlivet Whisky, and was, of course, at full capacity. With a cigar and a Whisky in hand, the passionados were able to listen to how two tobacco revolutionaries, Litto and Carlito, shared their story, their past, their beginnings, and how they met… “I came to the Dominican Republic,” Litto recounted, “to set up a cigar factory, and I didn’t know anything about tobacco. I was just another cigar passionado who had this idea, and Carlito Fuente was my idol. I admired him more than anyone, and as soon as I arrived, Carlito Fuente invited me to dinner.”

For just over an hour, including questions from the audience, Litto Gómez and Carlito Fuente gave an engaging overview, full of amusing anecdotes, of the past, present, and future of Dominican tobacco. “The tobacco industry is currently at its peak,” Carlito affirmed. “Never before have we had so many opportunities, or so much high-quality tobacco to continue creating unique and distinctive cigars and to maintain the consistency of our blends.”

Litto Gómez and Carlito Fuente, each in their own way, have always sought to distinguish themselves, to do new and different things, and to revolutionize tobacco, and now they both have the responsibility of preparing the next generation of their family to take the reins. At the end, they both tipped their hats in a sign of mutual respect, and the attendees showered them with applause and passion.