Rizal Day

Rizal Day

December 30

A national holiday in the Philippines, Rizal Day commemorates the execution of the national hero, Dr. JosÉ Rizal, on this day in 1896. Flags fly at half-staff throughout the country, and special rites are led by the president at the 500-foot obelisk that is the Rizal Monument in Manila.
Rizal, born in 1861 in the Philippines, was a doctor who studied medicine in Spain, France, and Germany. He was also a botanist, educator, man of letters, and inspiration for the Philippine nationalist movement. Writing from Europe and denouncing the corrupt ruling of the Philippines by Spanish friars, he became known as a leader of the Philippine reform movement.
He wrote the novel, Noli me tangere (1886; The Lost Eden, 1961), for which the Spanish administration deported him shortly after he had returned to the Philippines in 1887. He again returned to the Philippines in 1892 and founded a nonviolent reform movement, as a result of which he was exiled to the Philippine island of Mindanao, where he established a school and hospital.
Rizal had no direct role in the nationalist insurrection; nevertheless, he was arrested, tried for sedition, and executed by a firing squad. On the eve of his execution, he wrote the poem "Mi Ultimo Adiós," meaning "My Last Farewell." The poem, in the original Spanish and translated into other languages, is transcribed on a marble slab near the Rizal Monument.

CONTACTS:
Philippine Tourism Center
556 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10036
212-575-7915; fax: 212-302-6759
www.philippinetourism.us

SOURCES:
AnnivHol-2000, p. 215

Celebration day: Dec 30

Celebrated in: Philippines