Video. President Alberto Fernández headed the ceremony for the bicentennial of the first raising of the Argentine flag in the Malvinas Islands at the Olivos presidential residence and chaired the inaugural meeting of the Malvinas National Council, made up of members from different political forces, academics, lawyers and Malvinas veterans.
During the ceremony, held on November 6, two hundred years after our country took possession of the islands, the President raised the Argentine flag simultaneously with the cities of Buenos Aires, where the Chief of Government Horacio Rodríguez Larreta led the act; La Quiaca (Jujuy), with the presence of the mayor, Blas Gallardo; Ushuaia, from where the governor, Gustavo Melella, and the mayor, Walter Vuotto, participated; and Río Grande (Tierra del Fuego), where the mayor, Martín Pérez, participated.
The Chief of Staff, Santiago Cafiero; the Governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof; the Minister of Foreign Relations, International Trade and Worship, Felipe Solá; and the Secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica and South Atlantic, Daniel Filmus; as well as Malvinas veterans and their families also participated in the central ceremony.
The raising also took place simultaneously in the city of Corrientes, with the mayor, Eduardo Tassano; the Buenos Aires town of Malvinas Argentinas, where the mayor Leonardo Nardini and the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo de Pedro participated; on the Island 25 de Mayo of the Argentine Antarctica, with all the personnel working at the Carlini Base; at the Malvinas Museum, in the City of Buenos Aires, where its director, Edgardo Esteban, participated; and in hundreds of other towns across the country.
After the event, the Head of State led the first meeting of the National Council on Affairs Related to the Malvinas, South Georgias, and South Sandwich Islands and the corresponding Maritime and Insular spaces, composed of the main political forces, academics, lawyers and veterans, and created at the initiative of the national government.
The Council seeks to contribute to the design and implementation of State policies that guarantee the full exercise of sovereignty in those territories, while collaborating in the elaboration of geographical, environmental, historical, legal and political elements in support of the Argentine position in the sovereignty dispute.
On November 6, 1820, the Argentine Navy Colonel, David Jewett, took possession of the Islands on behalf of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and, in front of the captains and crews of vessels of various nationalities anchored at Puerto Soledad, raised the Argentine flag, fired a 21-gun salute, and read a proclamation.
The taking of possession of the Malvinas was an official and public manifestation of the effective exercise of Argentine sovereignty that was interrupted on January 3, 1833, when the United Kingdom usurped the islands and expelled the legitimate authorities and the population that had settled there.
