How Andalusia Day is celebrated

February 28 is the Day of Andalusia, an eminently festive day in which the approval of the autonomy referendum of the Autonomous Community by the Andalusian people is remembered. If you want to know how Andalusia Day is celebrated, keep reading this article from.

Commemoration of the referendum

The Day of Andalusia is commemorated on February 28, date in which the referendum was held in 1980, by which Andalusia achieved its status as an Autonomous Community within the then recent Spanish democratic state, a status that was endorsed after the approval of its Statute of Autonomy on December 30, 1981 (subsequently amended in 2007). Andalusia was the only Spanish Autonomous Community that achieved this status through the so-called "fast track" of Article 151 of the Spanish Constitution, fruit of popular support demonstrated at the polls and after popular demands for years.

The most massive of the period took place on December 4, 1977, a day in which thousands of Andalusians took to the streets to demand autonomy from Andalusia, and in which the young Manuel José García Caparrós was shot dead in Malaga., when trying to place a flag in the building of the Provincial Council.

Public holiday

February 28 is a holiday throughout the Autonomous Community, and often leads to a "bridge" of several days, if that year falls near the weekend. It is for this reason a date in which traditionally one lives with happiness and in which there is a great affluence of people in the main tourist centers of the Community, like Seville, Cordoba, Granada or Sierra Nevada. But beyond its festive nature as a non-working day, the Day of Andalusia is commemorated in many points of the Community, both collectively and privately, either with street activities, cultural events or hanging from the balconies the blanquiverde flag .

In the schools it is customary for example in the previous days to carry out activities in which this date is commemorated, the Andalusian hymn is sung and bread is eaten with olive oil.

The anthem

The Andalusian hymn is a composition of Blas Infante himself, considered as the "father of the Andalusian homeland", who composed the lyrics, and of the maestro José Castillo, who made the musical arrangements adapting a popular religious song of the peasants of some regions Andalusian It premiered for the first time in Seville in 1936 and the lyrics are as follows:

The white and green flag returns, after centuries of war, to say peace and hope, under the sun of our land. Andalusians, get up! Ask for land and freedom! Be for free Andalusia, Spain and Humanity! We Andalusians want to be what we were men of light, that we gave to men, the soul of men. Andalusians, get up! Ask for land and freedom! Be for free Andalusia, Spain and Humanity!

Institutional acts

The Junta de Andalucía celebrates this day with solemnity with institutional events in the eight provincial capitals, in which the Andalusian flag is presented to distinguished personalities and groups from each province in various areas, as a form of distinction. Likewise, the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville hosts the ceremony of delivery of the titles of Favorite Sons of Andalusia to those people or institutions related to the Autonomous Community that have most significantly stood out both inside and outside its borders.