1rst of December, the war between 2 ethnics

The first of December is the national day of Romania. On one hand, this date is a very huge party for Romanian ethnic but on the other hand, it represents the failure of more than the 2 million Hungarian people living in the state of Romania.

The 1rst of December of 1918, after the WWI, took place the unification of Romania or the failure of the Autro-Hungar Empire. After 2 years with the Treaty of Trianon the Allies of the WWI decided the status of Transylvania and defined the new border between the states of Hungary and Romania.

French boys during the event in Alba Iulia. Foto: Laia Sanchez

Harghita, Székelyföld

I live in Csikszereda, a little city in the centre of Romania, in the region of Harghita, were the 85% of the total of the inhabitants of the region (326.2220 the last census in 2002) are Hungarian living under the Romanian state. They are called maghiar. This territory has authonomy in education for example. Maghiar have maghiar schools and representants in the Parliament of Romania with the party UDMR (The Maghiar's Democratical Union in Romania). The majority of maghiar don't have good or any relationship with Romanian. One of the reasons is that they hates to each other. Romanian hates Maghiar in Harghita because the centralist conception of a uninational state like in France. And, also Maghiar does not like Romanian because of the history. First of all, because Transilvany was Hungary before the WWI and moreover, after the WWII, Romania experienced 42 years of communism and Hungaria's culture was extremely persecue. They couldn't speak their language, could not lsistening hungarian music or read in hungarian language... A lot of Maghiar were killed for defending their culture.

Nowadays the majority of Romanian in Csikszereda live in the neighbourhood were the police are, because they are the family of the police,wich are a central institution coming from Bucarest, Romania's capital.

You can breath the coldest air of all the state of Romania in Harghita and moreover, you can see the Hungarian nationalist, as well.

War of religions

But the nationalism that you can notice is trhough the religion. Csikszereda is quite special because there is Csíksomlyó, the Hungarian name and Ciuc Sumuleu (in Rumanian), were during Pentecoste takes place the pilgrimage of more than 500.000 catholic of all the state of Romania and moreover arround all Hungary too. It's a date considerable because in this city only live 40.000 inhabitants during the year. As you can see the majority of Hungarian are Catholic or Protestant. Romanian are Orthodox. This is a point to understand. The state of Romania at present is giving a lot of money to help the Orthodox Church in spite of having a Constitution which wants the power's division and the no implication of religion at Politics.

Although during the Communism all the religions were banned a lot of critics say that the most important positions of the Orthodox Church like the Patriarhul (the Pope for Orthodox) were related with Securitate, Ceauşescu's Security.