La Mano (The Hand)

Five enormous fingers emerging from Playa Brava — the defining image of Punta del Este

Five enormous concrete fingers thrust up from the sand of Playa Brava — the image that appears on more postcards and social media feeds from Uruguay than anything else in the country. The scale surprises visitors who have only seen photographs: the sculpture is about 4 metres tall, with fingers proportioned to a body that would be roughly 40 metres high. The hand emerges at an angle, slightly tilted, which makes it look genuinely desperate rather than decorative.

The beach setting changes the sculpture throughout the day. In the morning the light hits it directly; in the evening it throws a long shadow across the sand. At high tide the waves sometimes reach the base of the wrist. It is impossible to visit Punta del Este without walking past it — Playa Brava stretches directly in front of the main resort area — but the sculpture is worth a deliberate stop rather than a glance in passing.

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The sculpture was made by Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal in 1982 for the first International Sculpture Symposium held on the beach. It was intended as a reminder of the dangers of drowning — five fingers reaching upward from the sand as if a swimmer were going under. Visitors immediately adopted it as a symbol of the city instead. Irarrázabal has since installed nearly identical hands on beaches in Spain, Hungary, and Venezuela, but this was the first.