RESIDENTS of Sokoľany, a suburban area of Košice, celebrated a historical legal victory by roasting of a young bull, consumption of four kinds of goulash and other celebratory festivities into the wee hours of the night.
After a long dispute with the city of Košice, the suburban community with 1,200 residents regained almost 700 hectares of land where U.S. Steel buildings are standing, yielding €664,000 annually in taxes.
Sokoľany has a bull in its coat of arms so the mayor, Tomáš Suchý, after learning about the verdict of Slovakia’s Supreme Court in April 2009, decided to start a new tradition – the Sokoľany Bull Festival.
Sokoľany and another 13 municipalities lost their land in the 1980s when the Communist Regional National Committee ruled that 3,500 hectares of land would be included in Košice’s cadastre.
The municipalities had been fighting for return of the land since 1997 but all the villages gave up, except Sokoľany. However, Košice hasn’t yet lost the war as its municipal council has asked the Constitutional Court to overrule the Supreme Court’s decision and return the case for further trial, the Korzár daily newspaper wrote.
