Cuba Celebrates National Day of Culture This October 20

From the lobby of the Habana Libre Hotel, the notes of the Entrevoces Choir, under the direction of the teacher and National Music Prize winner Digna Guerra, preceded the declamation of the poem My Flag, a work by Cuban patriot Bonifacio Byrne.

In his speech, the dean of the San Geronimo College and historian, Felix Julio Alfonso, recalled the origins of the national flag, which guided the mambises in the fight for independence and, in contemporary times, accompanies the internationalist medical brigades, creators and sportspeople of Cuba all over the world.

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He highlighted the initiative of the Group of Artistic Creation Confecciones Loida, which knew how to capture the essence of the most allegorical poem to the national emblem and to magnify it in unprecedented dimensions (28 m long x 14 m wide), which represents a national record.

Belonging to the Cuban Fund for Cultural Heritage, the group headed by creator Loida Fernandez Torres dedicated the feat, completed in the middle of this year, to the scientists, doctors and health personnel who have tirelessly fought against COVID-19.

"The #DíaDeLaCulturaCubana is the one in which was written, on a stirrup, the definitive song of the nation, the idea, never abandoned, that "to die for the Homeland is to live." #ACubaPonleCorazón

Likewise, Yaniel Díaz, head of the Alpinismo Borao construction collective, told Prensa Latina about the arduous process of assembling and fastening the banner, which required the efforts of more than 15 workers to anchor it at a height of more than 126 meters above ground level.

The ceremony was attended by the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando León Jacomino and the Vice Chief of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Roberto Montesinos, and political and governmental authorities in the Cuban capital.