On the second day of his visit to Ireland, Queen Elizabeth II visited this Wednesday at Croke Park stadium in Dublin. A highly symbolic passage in the process of reconciliation between Britain and its neighbor.Croke Park has long remained the undisputed temple of Gaelic sports - such as hurling, Gaelic football and Camogie.
The stadium, which has a capacity of 82,300 seats, was opened to other sports (like football and rugby) in 2005, 92 years after its commissioning in 1913.
Most importantly, Croke Park was in 1920, the scene of a massacre orchestrated by British forces that helped lead to independence.
On the morning of November 21, 1920, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Armed Force independence, launched a commando in several places in Dublin to remove a network of agents of British intelligence.The review of the operation was high: in the ranks UK, 12 people were killed and two paramilitaries in the pay of the Crown.
In the afternoon, the regular British police, backed by paramilitaries, decides to conduct a "punitive expedition" during a Gaelic football match, sports flagship of Ireland.
Catalyst for the march towards Independence
The British forces entering Croke Park, where 5,000 people gathered, and opened fire on the crowd. Fourteen people, including a woman, two children and two players were killed.
London, which had not been informed of the operation, is struggling to justify the massacre.The official version of the authorities reported a police action aimed at searching the audience to uncover potential supporters of the IRA and said that it is they who opened fire first.
Subsequent surveys will invalidate this thesis.Seventy-nine years later, the "Bloody Sunday" ("Bloody Sunday", not to be confused with the 1972 in Londonderry, Ed) is still remembered for the Irish as one of the pivotal events of the march the country to Independence.
Indeed, he helped establish the resentment against Great Britain in the Irish population, until the formal independence of Eire in 1922.
In Ireland, Croke Park is more than a major sporting complex. It is a temple of Irish culture, a monument dedicated to the memory of the struggle for national independence.
