The municipal council of the municipality of Thessaloniki approved the naming two parks to comemorate Giannis Boutaris and Dionysis Savvopoulos, two personalities who have passed away. With this decision, green spaces in the city will bear the names of the former mayor of Thessaloniki, businessman and winemaker as well as the singer-songwriter, composer and lyricist.

The mayor of Thessaloniki, Stelios Angeloudis, in his statement stressed that the naming of the park opposite the town hall as “Park Yannis Boutaris” “is a due institutional and historical obligation and responsibility to an active and dynamic mayor of our city, whom the citizens honored with their trust twice.”

He argued that “for those who choose to either grab, exploit or politicize this due honor, we declare that we will not participate or reinforce the attempted division.” The mayor added that the “only institutional and moral heirs of Yannis Boutaris, his three children, have asked with great modesty and humility that there be a place of remembrance for the former mayor.”

It is noted that a protest was held outside the town hall early in the afternoon by people with Greek flags who demanded that the discussion of the naming of the “Yannis Boutaris Park” be cancelled, while the president of the city council, Spyros Vougias, interrupted the meeting when a representative of the United Macedonians intervened and called it an unacceptable decision and threw tirikia inside the hall.

As for the “Dionysis Savvopoulos Park”, Angeloudis said that “he was a great artist, a great ambassador of Greek music and Thessaloniki” and that now “there will be a place that will connect in perpetuity this great singer-songwriter with his birthplace”. The name of Dionysis Savvopoulos will be given to the green space located between Georgiou Papandreou and Maria Callas streets. The double naming was suggested by the president of the Municipal Council, Mr. Vougias.