The Pro Etnica Festival
The mediaeval citadel of Sighisoara played host to the 11th Pro Etnica Intercultural Festival.
Valentin Țigău, 02.09.2013, 12:17
On Sunday the central Romanian town of Sighisoara saw the end of the 11th edition of the Pro Etnica Intercultural Festival. The event is considered the most important annual meeting of ethno-folk groups in Romania. For three days, the town of Sighisoara was Romania’s multicultural capital. The representatives of the twenty national minorities in Romania presented on stage, through singing and dancing, the cultural heritage specific to their ethnic group. Besides artistic events the festival also included scientific debates on historical and contemporary topics as well as an original arts and crafts fair where craftsmen exhibited their traditional products.
Sighisoara was the ideal place for this kind of event. An old mediaeval Saxon citadel, Sighisora was erected in the 13th century and is now a UNESCO heritage site. During the festival, the town became a place of intercultural dialogue, of understanding and mutual respect. Irina Cajal is under secretary of state with the Culture Ministry.
“Given the recent international developments, namely those in Syria, I believe it is extraordinary to be able to have here in Sighisoara an oasis of peace. The nice people who came here to present the Romanian and the minorities’ culture have also shown the relationship between all cultural minorities in Romania and their diversity”.
According to the latest census conducted in Romania, the main national minorities are the Hungarians, accounting for 6.5% of the total of Romania’s stable population, and the Roma minority, which accounts for 3.2% of the population. Other ethnic groups with more than 20,000 people are the Ukrainian, German, Turkish, Lipovan Russian and Tartar communities. 18 minorities in Romania each have their own representative in the two-chamber Romanian Parliament, while and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania holds 27 deputy seats and 12 senator seats.
Romanians account for 88.6% of the population which gives the national and unitary character of the Romanian state as mentioned in the Constitution. The recent proposal of the ethnic Hungarians to eliminate the phrase “nation state” from the Constitution was not backed by their fellow MPs.
