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The oldest Bulgarian in Brazil has not forgotten his native language and refuses Brazilian citizenship

Tsvetan Apostolov with Nina Grigorova and Daniel Metodiev
Photo: personal library

His name is Tsvetan Apostolov and he was born in 1925 in the village of Lobosh near Pernik in Bulgaria. The 97-year old man lives in a house in Belo Horizonte, the sixth biggest city in Brazil with a population of 2.7 million. “As far as we know Tsvetan is the oldest Bulgarian in the country,” Daniel Metodiev, who also lives in Brazil, told the Bulgarian news agency BTA. Not long ago he visited with Tsvetan Apostolov and talked to him. What he found out was that in all of these years Tsvetan from Lobosh never forgot the Bulgarian language and gladly talks about his brothers, about his country of birth and his years as a student at Sofia University. Tsvetan Apostolov was 26 when he emigrated to Brazil in 1951.

“And in all those years Tsvetan never wanted to take Brazilian citizenship. He is fond of saying he is Bulgarian and will stay Bulgarian, and that as such he should only have one citizenship – Bulgarian,” Daniel Metodiev says.



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