The Diplomat
Next Sunday, January 25, the Solidarity Polish Carnival will be held in Madrid from 12 to 19 hours at the Centro Cultural Galileo (calle Fernando el Católico, 35), thanks to the collaboration of the Chamberí District.
The Great Solidarity Christmas Orchestra (Polish: WOŚP) is a charitable action that has been held in Poland for 34 years. Every last Sunday in January, concerts, cultural and sporting events, collections and auctions are organized throughout the country to raise funds for medical equipment for public hospitals in Poland. This peculiar “solidarity festival”, which contributes annually to the Polish public health system, was created by Jurek Owsiak, a music journalist and organiser of rock festivals (such as Pol’and’Rock in Poland, Europe’s largest open-air festival). Owsiak is the founder of the Polish NGO responsible for this great action and the coordination of collections that are also carried out outside Poland thanks to volunteers abroad.
In Spain, the WOSP Madrid solidarity Polish carnival will be held in the Community of Madrid and in other cities such as Alicante, Granada, Murcia, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Valencia and Tenerife.
This year the concert program promises to be really spectacular and very varied: From rock, soul, grunge, to blues, swing and Polish folklore! Polish musicians and singers and Spanish artists will perform. Thanks to the collaboration with The Spanish Wave, an internationalization project for Spanish talent, we will once again have bands from Madrid.
Apart from music and dancing, there will be workshops for children, flea markets, auctions and lotteries, and of course typical Polish dishes. This Sunday the hosts at the Galileo Cultural Center will be Polish, inviting you to know the best of your country and, above all, the joy of sharing and helping.
The Great Solidarity Christmas Orchestra Foundation [in Polish: Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy] is one of the most trusted organizations among the Polish population. Over its thirty-four years of activity, the Foundation raised and donated more than PLN 2.6 billion (approximately 615 million euros) to support Poland’s public health system and purchase more than 81,000 medical devices. In 2022, the Foundation also allocated more than PLN 23 million to help Ukraine.
This year, the collection is intended to support children with digestive tract diseases.
Online donations: (EUR) https://4fund.com/es/wospmadryt
Electronic cash box (e-skarbonka, PLN): https://eskarbonka.wosp.org.pl/zasesehajy