📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Sunday 6 September
Sunday, a public holiday, and the one date on the Bulgarian calendar that a Brit can explain in a single sentence: this is the day the country got its south back. Thirteen years in and I still think Unification Day is the most underrated of the September set, quite literally overshadowed by Independence Day a fortnight later.
What happened on this day
In 1878 the great powers had carved the liberated Bulgarian lands into two pieces: the Principality of Bulgaria north of the Balkan range and Eastern Rumelia south of it, an autonomous province still under the Sultan with Plovdiv as its capital. Nobody in either half thought this was permanent. In the spring of 1885 the Bulgarian Secret Central Revolutionary Committee, formed in Plovdiv under Zahari Stoyanov, started campaigning openly for union through the press and public rallies, and sent organisers out to the provincial towns to gather rebels and march them on the capital.
On 6 September 1885 (Old Style; the English Wikipedia entry gives 18 September by the modern calendar, which is why the two dates float about online) troops under Major Nikolaev took control of Plovdiv without a shot, the governor-general Gavril Krastevich was arrested and paraded through the streets, and the province declared itself joined to the Principality. Two days later Prince Alexander I of Battenberg issued a proclamation styling himself "prince of Northern and Southern Bulgaria". The great powers were, in theory, appalled. Serbia went further and attacked in November, which turned into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, and the whole thing was only settled on paper by the Tophane Agreement of 1886 with the Ottoman Empire. So the country celebrates not a treaty but a coup that worked, which tells you something about how Bulgarians like their history.
Towns celebrating today
Plovdiv does not need the excuse, but it takes it: 6 September is the city's own day as well as the national one, because the Unification was proclaimed here. The second-largest city in the country, home to the ancient Roman theatre and the Old Town, and European Capital of Culture in 2019, it hosts the main national celebration, so expect the centre to be busy and the evening to end loudly.
Chirpan, on the Tekirska river in Stara Zagora province, holds its town day under the Unification banner. Its signature is a poet: Peyo Yavorov was born here, and his native house is now a museum. The town was badly knocked about by an earthquake in 1928, which is why so little of what he would have known survives.
Chiprovtsi, tucked into the north-west near Montana, is the odd one out, and the municipal calendar itself labels the date a bit of a muddle. Its signature is the kilim: hand-woven wool carpets in natural dyes are still the dominant trade in a town of just over two thousand people, and its other claim to fame is the failed uprising of 1688, after which the place was emptied for decades. If you are anywhere near it today, buy a rug.
Why this matters for British expats
The nearest British equivalent is not a battle but an Act of Union, except that Bulgaria's was done in a day by a revolutionary committee rather than over years by parliaments, and the anniversary is a day off rather than a footnote. Practically, this is one of the rare days when the logistics genuinely matter: it is both a Sunday and a public holiday, so banks, government offices and the tax and residency desks are shut, and the usual rule is that a holiday landing on a weekend rolls to the next working day, so check with your employer before assuming Monday is normal. If you want to say one informed thing at the barbecue, say "Съединението" (sa-ye-dee-NE-nee-eh-to), the Unification, and mention Plovdiv; every Bulgarian at the table will know exactly what you mean. There is no Shumen tie-in I can find in the record, so this one is a Plovdiv day: if you can get there by evening, the south of the country does this holiday better than anywhere.
Sources and further reading
The sequence of the coup, the committee's spring campaign and the Serbian response come from the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on the Unification, cross-checked with the English one for the Tophane Agreement and the calendar dates. The town notes draw on the English Wikipedia pages for Plovdiv, Chirpan and Chiprovtsi.