San Sebastián (EFE)
Donostia was in 2020 almost the only city that was able to celebrate parties, two months before the confinement, but it has also been the last to fully recover it.
San Sebastián recovers the party
Like that fateful year, this January 20, 2023, the people of San Sebastian have once again filled the streets with music, to the sound of barrels and drums, in the 158 tamborradas of adults that cover different neighborhoods of the city for 24 hours and also, at noon, in the massive children’s tamborrada, the great protagonist of the day.
The day started at midnight with its most massive act, the hoisting of the flag that has attracted hundreds of people who have filled the Plaza de la Constitución to bursting, where the drumming of Gaztelubide and representatives of other groups have kicked off the the party with the help this year of the Easo Choir and the Kresala dantzaris.
From there, each adult company, up to a total of 20,400 people, are parading on their schedule and route throughout the day.
After a night of non-stop partying, the daytime role, as every year, has fallen to the children’s drumming.
While in 2021 all the events of the party were suspended, last year the children were able to go out in a children’s drumming adapted to the sanitary measures, which stole the smiles of the kids, hidden behind the obligatory masks.
This time, the smiles of the 4,731 children who, distributed in 48 companies and dressed in Napoleonic costumes, have paraded through the center of the city as Raimundo Sarriegi’s marches passed by, did shine.
truce of the storm
Even the winter storm that has hit the Basque Country all week has decided not to spoil the return of the party, providing a cold but sunny day, which has made it possible to fully enjoy the children’s parade.
While the little ones paraded through the streets of the center, one of the most solemn acts of the festive day was held in the plenary hall of the Town Hall, which also did not take place normally in the last two years, the delivery of the Golden Drum, the award that the city offers its best ambassadors.
knowledge city
The honoree on this occasion has been Javier García Cogorro, a 60-year-old from Madrid who runs the biotechnology company Viralgen, dedicated to the production of viral vectors for gene therapies, which he decided to locate in San Sebastián in 2017.
The director of BIC Gipuzkoa and president of the Association Against Cancer in Gipuzkoa, Marisa Arriola, has been in charge of reading the “laudatio” about García Cogorro, whom she has defined as a “visionary” and a “transformative businessman”.
The mayor of San Sebastián, Eneko Goia, stressed that “life flourishes again after two years in which we have faced the vulnerability of human beings.” “Today we are all here together, without masks, we can hug each other and sing the San Sebastián march together,” he celebrated.
He has stressed that the “bad dream” of covid-19 “no longer paralyzes our lives” thanks to science, to people like García Cogorro, “a man from San Sebastián born in Madrid” who decided to carry out his work in San Sebastián.
“It is no coincidence that this project has found its place in San Sebastián”, stated the mayor, who added that Donostia “is a city of science and knowledge and it will be more intense in the coming years”.
“Happy” in San Sebastian
After receiving the Golden Drum from the mayor, Javier García Cogorro has expressed his “tremendous emotion” for the recognition that a city has given him in which, he has said, he feels “happy”.
He has been grateful for the institutional support he found in Gipuzkoa to establish his company in the San Sebastián Technology Park, both from the Provincial Council and from the San Sebastian City Council.
García Cogorro has affirmed that he understands science from the point of view of humanism, so that companies like Viralgen must have an impact “that goes beyond the income statement.”
For this reason, he wanted San Sebastián “to be a city of science and knowledge with the aim of changing the world”.
The party continues in the capital of San Sebastian until midnight, when, to the rhythm of the drums of the Unión Artesana, the flag is lowered in the Plaza de la Constitución.