site.btaBTA Director General Receives Awakener of 2024 Award for Developing Culture, Education in Europe and Around the World

Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev was presented here on Wednesday evening with the Awakener of 2024 Award for development of culture and education in Europe and around the world. The distinction was conferred by the Bulgarian Embassy in Skopje and the Bulgarian Culture and Information Centre in Skopje during the marking of National Awakeners' Day, November 1, at the Centre's open gallery. This was the second time this award was conferred; last year, it went to then foreign minister Mariya Gabriel.

The Awaker of 2024 Award for public activity, contribution to the strengthening of universal values and preservation and development of the Bulgarian language, culture, history and tradition went to a representative of the Bulgarian community in the Republic of North Macedonia, the head of the Horizons Association in Ohrid, Lyupcho Kurtelov. This was the fourth time this award was conferred.

Presenting the award to the BTA Director General, Ambassador Zhelyazko Radukov said: "Journalism was an interesting and valued profession in a world before news became a business, a world in which news was a public good. That world is gone now, I'm afraid, but it still holds the seeds of what we still call serious journalism and serious information. And we, as citizens, as a society, and I, as a professional, rely very much on that. BTA is one of those grains without which the media space in Bulgaria would not be the same. This is the place we turn to when we still want to read the truth." Radukov also thanked Valchev for his support in the establishment of the Bulgarian Culture and Information Centre in downtown Skopje, where it has been located for two years.

In his speech, Valchev said: "When one reads in the booklet titled How Did Our National Awakeners and Heroes Write? from the middle of the last century, whose author is said to be long-standing leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization Ivan (Vanche) Mihaylov, the names of the national awakeners from Macedonia, one realizes one's own unworthiness to receive an award that has the word awakener in it.  The book has gathered documents that show how the awakeners of the era of our national Revival in Macedonia - Kiril Peychinovich, Konstantin and Dimitar Miladinov, Yordan Hadjikonstantinov, Rayko Zhinzifov, Grigor Parlichev - wrote. Also collected in the book are more original documents in Bulgarian, written by individuals whom the author also defines as awakeners - Gotse Delchev, Damyan Gruev, Hristo Tatarchev, Hristo Matov, Pere Toshev, Boris Sarafov, Hristo Uzunov, Todor Alexandrov ... Against the backdrop of these names of awakeners, it is a great burden to accept recognition such as what the Bulgarian Culture and Information Center in Skopje is doing on the eve of National Awakeners' Day. But it becomes more acceptable when one sees in it not a personal recognition, although received in a personal capacity."

In his words, the BTA National Press Club in Skopje and the entire Bulgarian News Agency deserve recognition for its 126 years of presence in the Balkans, and for the last two years as the headquarters and Secretary General of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SEE). "And this recognition is well deserved for the efforts of real news from Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia to wake people up from the slumber in which they are lulled by fake news, and some fall asleep so deeply that they miss real life. Because to be awake is to be. And without truth and memory, no one can be. There is no truth without memory and no memory without truth. So truth and memory are two of the five purposes that BTA has. The other three are freedom, knowledge and community," said Valchev, who presented the Bulgarian Culture and Information Centre in Skopje with the three books published for BTA's 125th anniversary.

"The fact that we celebrate National Awakeners' Day on the feast day of St John of Rila, the patron saint of the Bulgarian people, who in his testament tells us to try to live in unison and with one mind, reminds us how important it is to try to be a community in everything - one of the five goals of the BTA. Together, Bulgarian institutions are stronger wherever they are in the world - as we are here in Skopje, and even in the physical sense, on the same street as the Bulgarian Culture and Information Centre and BTA. Together, we are stronger Bulgarians in the world, whatever borders separate us. Together, across all borders we are stronger people when we are united in thinking respectfully about the rights of the other, as we do in the European Union, of which Bulgaria is a part. And the awakeners from Macedonia, whose names are in the booklet How Did Our National Awakeners and Heroes Write?, awakened the compatriots to see limitless possibilities and not to sleep behind walls," Valchev said.

Receiving his award, Lyupcho Kurtelov said he sees it as a recognition not of himself but of the Kurtelov family. "Unlike others who came to understand their roots on their own, I had the privilege of hearing the truth from my father. Not a day went by that I did not hear from him about the Macedonian awakeners, about Slivnitsa, about the Balkan Wars, about the revolutionaries... He constantly told me that we should be proud to be Bulgarians and that we had no right to give up what our ancestors were. And they are Dimitar Miladinov, great-grandfather of my grandmother Kate from Struga, Stefan Kurtelov, who was wounded in the battle of Rashanets and committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the Turks, Angel Kurtelov, a member of IMRO, who unfortunately became a victim of the fratricidal conflicts in Bulgaria. But a saying of ours goes, 'The grandfather is not important, the deed is important'. I am working to be the next link in the Kurtelov chain. With this recognition, it seems I am succeeding", he said.