Tizi Ouzou Amazigh Spring Festival

A spring cultural festival in Tizi Ouzou commemorating the Berber Spring of 1980, when the cancellation of a Kabyle scholar's university lecture triggered a foundational movement for Amazigh identity recognition, marked through music, poetry and exhibitions distinct from the separate January Yennayer new year observance.

In March 1980, Algerian authorities cancelled a university lecture on Berber poetry by the Kabyle scholar Mouloud Mammeri at Tizi Ouzou's Hasnaoua University, triggering more than two months of demonstrations, strikes and, eventually, a violent crackdown that became known as the Berber Spring, or Tafsut Imazighen, a foundational event in the modern movement for recognition of Amazigh identity and language in Algeria.