Bulgaria and Croatia are related by friendship, based on deep historical and spiritual ties and the Bulgarian national community in the country has its significant contribution to strengthening and developing the bilateral relations. This is what President Rumen Radev said at a meeting with representatives of the Bulgarian national minority in Croatia held in Zagreb today.

Croatia’s support for the Bulgarian spiritual and cultural activists has a tradition of over 150 years, Rumen Radev emphasized and recalled the contribution of Josip Strossmayer to the publication of the great work of the Dimitar and Konstantin Miladinov brothers from Struga “Bulgarian folk songs” in 1861 and also the scholarships given for the training of talented Bulgarian young people from the epoch of the National Revival.

The representatives of the Bulgarian national minority in Croatia hailed President Radev for Bulgaria’s active policy for expanding the partnership with Croatia and also for the efforts to open a direct flight Beijing-Sofia-Zagreb, which will also encourage the contacts between the businesses, tourism, and the cultural and educational exchange between the two countries.

The representatives of the Bulgarian community in Croatia are successors of the Bulgarians-gardeners, who settled down in the country at the end of the 19th C. and beginning of the 20th C., are activists of culture and art, emigrants from the past years. In the autumn of 2019 a Sunday school will start functioning in Zagreb, where the Bulgarian language will be taught.