For one night, many decided to put aside the increasingly tight budgets by inflation and a virus that is still wreaking havoc in China for join the festive atmosphere of New Year’s Eve after years marked by the covid.
Without sanitary restrictions of the last years, in Rio de Janeiro, the mythical Copacabana beach received crowds for a show of fireworks and a dozen concerts.
These are shocked times in Brazil, which says goodbye with three days of mourning for soccer legend Pelé Y awaits, this January 1, the assumption of power of the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after four years of government of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
“There is a hope of a new government that sees more people’s healthsaid Ana Carolina Rodrigues, from Rio de Janeiro, dressed in white as is the tradition for New Year’s celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.
The Champs Elysees in Paris they were filled with about a million people to watch the fireworks.
Sydney was one of the first big cities to enter in 2023retaking his crown of “New Year’s Eve capital of the world” after two years of confinement or Celebrations suspended in Australia due to covid.
In Madridthat already a year ago It was one of the few European cities with normal New Year’s Eve celebrationsthousands of people they congregated in the Puerta del Sol to eat twelve grapes to the rhythm of the midnight chimes.
It may interest you: Thousands of people begin to gather for the inauguration of Lula
And in London, crowds gathered on the banks of the Thames to observe for the first time after three years of cancellations the fireworks and audiovisual show at the end of the yearwhich on this occasion paid homage to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
At a religious service in Rome Pope Francis greeted his predecessor Benedict XVI as “beloved” died hours before at the age of 96.
The celebrations were seen marred by tragedy in Ugandawhere at least nine people died and several more were injured in a stampede at a shopping mall in the capital, Kampala.
“THE YEAR IN UKRAINE”
The long-lived sovereign heads the list of personalities killed this year: of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abegoing through the Spanish writer Javier Marías and Cuban singer Pablo Milanés.
They were added in the last bars of 2022 the legendary Brazilian soccer player Pelé and the emeritus pope Benedict XVIpassed away on Saturday at the age of 95.
But if for something it will probably remain in the memory this 2022 will be for the return of war to Europeshaken since February by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.
“It was our year. the year of Ukraine“said its president Volodimir Zelensky in his New Year’s Eve speech.
After more than 300 days of conflictsome 7,000 civilians have been killed, more than 10,000 have been injured Y about 16 million displacedaccording to UN figures.
Despite the wear and tear of the war, the curfew, the power blackouts and the Russian bombings that continued to shake the capital kyiv on New Year’s Eve and New Yearsome were determined to celebrate the night
“Our enemies, the Russians, can destroy our calm, but they can’t destroy our spirit. This year it is important to have people close to us”, affirmed the filmmaker Yaroslav Mutenko, 23, next to the rubble left by a bombing in kyiv.
In Vladimir Putin’s RussiaMoscow decided cancel your fireworks. Resident of the capital, Irina Shapovalova, a 51-year-old nursing home worker, simply wished for “a peaceful sky above our heads” by 2023.
Also read: Benedict XVI will be buried in a crypt of Saint Peter’s Basilica
In his New Year’s speech, Putin assured that “moral and historical justice” is on the side of Russiahold it major Western sanctions for the war.
FIREWORKS
In NY, huge amounts of confetti fell on the crowd after the famous ball drop in Times Square, a tradition that dates back to 1907.
Under a cold rain, the Mexican tourist Fabiola Cepeda waited for eight hours in the emblematic square. “Definitely worth it,” she said.
In The Middle East, the United Arab Emirates welcomed the new year with a fireworks display from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world at 830 meters.
Nail laser lights accompanied the show and they formed messages like “Embraced again” in an apparent reference to the anticovid restrictions that are beginning to go down in history.
But The virus has not disappeared as the situation in China shows that, after dismantling its containment strategy, faces a spike in infections that pressures hospitals and crematoriums and It has led to the cancellation of some festivities.
“We are still in a difficult moment.”but “the light of hope is before us”said President Xi Jinping in a televised New Year’s address.
