The province takes its name from the yacht Granma, used by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro to land in Cuba with 82 guerrillas on December 2, 1956; until 1976 the area formed part of the larger Oriente Province.

In 2005 Hurricane Dennis destroyed the site of Castro's headquarters at La Plata.

At the 2018 parliamentary election, Granma was the province with the highest proportion of votes recorded for the full list.

[4] On 12 April 2020, Veguitas, a town in Gramna Province, recorded a temperature of 39.7 °C (103.5 °F).

[5] The majority of the revenue comes from coffee grown in the forested and mountainous regions of the province.