The fighting spirit of this town attracted the attention of Julio Antonio Mella, who visited San Antonio de los Baños for the first time in 1923. In a speech delivered in 1924, he called it Villa Roja due to the strong Labor Movement.
That year, he led the creation of the José Martí Popular University Subsidiary established in the center, which Julio Antonio Mella and Rubén Martínez Villena attended weekly.
A transcendentally important event in the history of Cuba was the constitution of the Communist Association on August 9, 1925, at the Círculo de Trabajadores, in San Antonio de los Baños. The act of foundation was attended by Julio Antonio Mella, Leonardo Fernández Sánchez, Sarah Pascual and other leaders.
The communist group was integrated by Miguel Valdés García, Emilio Rodríguez Lara, Oscar de Armas, José de Armas, Elizardo de Armas, José Pino, Eladio Lemus, Simón Padrón, Arturo Paula and Juan Victorio More. Manuel Alejandro Ramos was elected as President and Carlos M. Rodríguez was in charge of the Secretariat. In one of the agreements, militants Miguel Valdés García and Emilio Rodríguez Lara were elected as delegates to the Constitutive Congress of the First Communist Party of Cuba.
In December 1925, when Mella was imprisoned, a commission of 10 workers was appointed to deliver a protest communication to the Prosecutor of the Republic, requesting freedom for the revolutionary leader and other political prisoners. Numerous strikes continued in the locality by different labor sectors, demanding better working conditions and wages.
The presence of Julio Antonio Mella endures in San Antonio de los Baños, so one of its educational institutions bears his name.