The Diplomat
The Hungarian Embassy is presenting a series of events as part of the Hungarian Days in Spain, on the occasion of the Hungarian National Day, which is celebrated every 23rd October to commemorate the 1956 Revolution and the creation of the Third Hungarian Republic in 1989.
Invited by the Colegio Mayor Miraflores of Zaragoza, Ambassador Katalin Tóth will give a lecture tomorrow Monday at 19.30 in the Patio de la Infanta of Ibercaja on current political, economic, touristic and cultural issues, as part of the Club of Nations programme (the main element of the opening of the academic year).
On Tuesday 18 at 21.30 the film A tanú (The Witness) will be screened as part of the Hungarian Film Club at the Cines Embajadores (Glorieta Sta. María de la Cabeza, 5), a cinema considered to be the Hungarian cultural meeting point.
From the 18th to the 23rd of this month, the Intersección Festival of Contemporary Audiovisual Art will be held in A Coruña, a space for the visibility of innovative audiovisual creators, with the aim of showing the formal and conceptual diversity of contemporary artistic and audiovisual practices, reflecting their current dynamism. Hungary will be represented by the audiovisual artist Dóra Benyó. The programme will be attended by Vilmos Tóth, Honorary Consul of Hungary in Spain.
A tribute to the memory of the heroes of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Struggle for Freedom will also be held on 27 October at the monument erected in memory of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Struggle for Freedom in Madrid (Calle Sofia, 201). The monument is located in a park in the San Blas – Canillejas Las Rosas district of Madrid, next to Budapest Street, by decision of the Madrid City Council. The monument, entitled Patria, is the work of Hungarian sculptor Zoltán Fodor-Lengyel, who, among other things, received the Golden Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2017.
In Spain, unlike many countries in the world, there was no public monument to commemorate the Revolution and therefore no permanent place of remembrance. The Hungarian community in Spain started collecting signatures to change the situation. The Madrid City Council agreed to this petition, unanimously adopting on 30 March 2016 a resolution to erect the monument by October 2016, thus paying tribute to the memory of the heroes of the Revolution.
On 24 October at 6 p.m., the choir of the renowned Török Ignác Secondary School of Hungary will perform in the Royal Basilica of St. Francis the Great (1 St. Bonaventure Street). The history of the choir goes back a decade. The choir’s conductor is Dóra Tápai. In 2019, they toured Japan, where they gave 4 concerts in 3 cities. In 2018, they also participated in the qualifying competition Éneklő Ifjúság (Youth Singing), where they won “GOLD” in category A. The Royal Basilica of St. Francis the Great is a monumental neoclassical building with a diameter of 33 metres and a height of 58 metres. With its impressive dome it is the largest in Spain and the fourth largest in Europe.
On 25 October, at 6 p.m., a reception will be held at the Ambassador’s Residence on the occasion of the official Hungarian National Day. And finally, on 3 November, an event to promote the Cultural Capital of Europe Veszprém-Balaton 2023 will take place at the Centro Riojano in Madrid (Calle Serrano, 25) at 7.15 p.m. with top-quality Hungarian products and wines.
Finally, the presentation of Agosto (a play by Bruno Schulz), performed by Teatro Maladype, will take place at the Teatro Infanta Isabel in Madrid, with no date yet confirmed. This year’s event in Madrid is justified more than ever by its timeliness. In 2022, world literature will celebrate the centenary of the birth of Bruno Schulz, a writer who spent his life in Galicia and the Ukraine, and the performance, based on his collection of short stories, will present similar images of life during the First World War to the situation today.
