For the first time, this year Toronto will be the honoured city at the Romerías de Mayo (May Pilgrimages) cultural festival at the 17th edition of this celebration in the eastern Cuban city of 
Holguín. Each year during the first week of May, the young artists comprising the Hermanos Saiz Association invite friends from everywhere to this World Festival of Artistic Youth.
Holguín, the so called City of Parks, becomes the capital of Young Art for the best musicians, theatre artists, researchers, dancers, writers, painters, playwrights and every type of national and foreign promoters of culture.
The streets and spaces of Cuba′s third capital become settings for fabulous concerts and performances, exhibits, parties, workshops and public dancing as well as for the socio-cultural brainstorming sessions of the Interactive Social Forum.
The debate on the universality of our regional cultures, a tribute to the founding fathers, the relationship between the arts and generations and more avant-garde and experimental exercises, all have a place in this week committed to facing the need for new promotions and the urgency to provide a panorama of contemporary universal thought.
Discussion of the latter is seen not only from the capital′s perspective, but also from those who create and work in the arts in diverse regions, many who lack recognition and attention from the media.
The main events of this World Festival of Artistic Youth underscore the event′s diversity, including the Memoria Nuestra award, the Babel Fine Arts Edition, the Fifth Meeting of Street Dance and Theatre, the Hug Fiesta and La Camara Azul International Audiovisual Event.
History
The origin of Romerías de Mayo dates back to May 3, 1790, when Franciscan Friar Antonio Joseph Alegre climbed to the top of Cerro del Bayado carrying an enormous wooden cross that he placed on the summit to mark the geographic north of Holguin and perhaps also as a sort of protection against natural catastrophes and epidemics. The people of the town began marking May 3 by a climb to the top to request aid or miracles from the cross.
