With the great parade of student, political and military units that took place on the coastal Victory Avenue, up to the height of the White Tower, the celebrations for the national anniversary of March 25 were completed in Thessaloniki.

With the sun hiding under the clouds and the Beauforts making their presence felt, all the participants in the parade were warmly applauded by young and old who filled the sidewalks holding blue and white flags.

At the end of the parade, representatives of the political leadership, the church and the local government sent, through their statements, messages of national unity and solidarity for March 25 and the Annunciation of the Virgin.

Representing the Greek government, the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis said that “Greece in 200 years managed not only to liberate itself, but also to be among the most powerful countries on the planet. With the most powerful democracies. The next 200 years will be even better, as long as we have unity, prudence and prudence.”

The president of the Parliamentary Group of SYRIZA – PS and Member of Parliament for Thessaloniki, Sokratis Famellos, underlined that “today we respectfully pay tribute to the heroes and heroines of 1821 who gave their lives to have freedom and national independence. The race of ’21 teaches us and inspires us. Because we were able to achieve the impossible with unity, with courage and with high ideals. A people without weapons, after 400 years of slavery, we managed to win a great empire. Equipped and bossy. This means that everything can be conquered if we are united and have values. Our ancestors not only fought for national independence and freedom, but for a state that will have rules, equality, justice. And these ideals, these goals and these purposes remain alive even today, 200 years after the Greek Revolution, together with another good, the good of peace, Because on peace both life and democracy are built and the meaning of the freedom”.

Happy birthday for the double celebration, the national and the religious one, wished the member of the ND in 1st Thessaloniki, Kostas Giulekas. “They gave us our freedom. Today, Greece is fortifying this freedom, it is fortifying its peace so that it can face any danger,” he stressed.

For his part, the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki, Philotheos, wished that the “joyful messages of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and the liberation of the homeland would be a wake-up call for all of us, so that we realize both the value of faith in God and love for homeland”.

“Freedom needs virtue and courage”, was the first sentence of the mayor of Thessaloniki, Stelios Angeloudis, who immediately added: “203 years later, I think we can remember that day when we were reborn as Greeks in a free state. We owe gratitude to all those who watered the tree of freedom with a great tribute of blood and to remember our debt to the motherland, which we can only fulfill with unity, solidarity and social solidarity”.

The deputy governor of Thessaloniki, Voula Patoulidou, representing the Governor of Central Macedonia, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, who attended the student parade in the rural village of Achladochori in Serres, stood up to Yannis Ritsos’ Romiosyn, saying that “young men have been lost who wrote their names in golden letters in history and have inspire worldwide admiration. Let’s have them as guides even in today’s difficult days and we claim our rights again”.

Earlier, the official eulogy at the Holy Church of Panagia Achiropoiitou by Metropolitan Philotheos and the laying of a wreath on the Hero of the 3rd Army Corps were preceded.