Napoli won Italy’s top league for the first time in 33 years (Nick Potts/PA)

Video of fireworks display shows celebrations in Split, Croatia, in 2020

By August Graham, PA
15:54 - May 12, 2023

A video of a fireworks celebration has been shared by several internet users, including social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, alongside claims it shows the scenes in Naples after football team Napoli won the Serie A for the first time in over three decades.

The video appears to be taken from inside a car, and shows an enormous fireworks display at night which fills the sky with red and lights up the surroundings.

Evaluation: False

The video was taken in Split, Croatia, in 2020, not in Naples this year.

The occasion was a supporters’ groups for one of the town’s clubs, Torcida Split, celebrating its 70th anniversary.

The PA news agency has identified the junction in Split that the video appears to have been shot from and has found a version of the video which was uploaded to the internet in 2020.

This video, and others of the same celebrations in Croatia, have in the past been incorrectly linked to other events.

The facts

Comments under some of the videos indicated that the video was shot during the 70th anniversary of Torcida Split in October 2020.

The video was posted to Instagram just days after the celebrations by an account which appears to belong to a Russian woman who is married to a Croatian man.

It is unclear whether she is the original poster of the video, but she identifies it as being linked to the Torcida celebrations.

The video was shot by an intersection. The PA news agency reviewed Street View and satellite images to find the correct intersection.

This showed that the video was shot on the intersection between the Vukovarska and Velebitska streets in Split, Croatia.

Analysis

Side-by-side analysis of the video alongside Google Street View imagery shows the same buildings, signs, trees, road markings, lampposts and a car dealership visible in both.

In this frame of the video similar markings can be seen on the road to the Google Street View, and cars are visible on the left of the road.

A few seconds later the video pans to a view of the intersection with some high-rise buildings in the background. A street sign, a traffic light and the buildings in the background of the video match Street View imagery from 2019.

By December 2021, Street View images show, the traffic light had been moved to the other side of the street, meaning the video must have been shot before then.

Two seconds later, an advertising board, a row of decorative rocks on the ground and a lamppost can be seen. These all match the Street View images.

Finally, the car drives along the road and clearly shows markings on the road, another advertising board, and a tree which all match Street View.

The coordinates for the location of the intersection in Split are 43.513889, 16.471103.

Other uses of the video

This is not the first time this video, and others of the 2020 celebration in Split have been misidentified as another location.

For instance this same video was posted on several occasions as being from Trabzon in Turkey, and has been linked (likely as a joke) to Labour’s recent local election win in Stoke-on-Trent.

A different video of the same event in Split was shared by a professor at Johns  Hopkins University as being celebrations for Lula da Silva winning last year’s presidential election in Brazil.

Croatian media have written about the phenomenon of sharing videos of the celebration.

After Croatia won bronze at the Qatar World Cup last year, the country’s left-back Borna Sosa incorrectly shared the video with a claim it was a celebration of the medal, according to one report.

Links

Tweet of video (archived tweet and video)

Video on YouTube (archived post and video)

Tweet of video (archived tweet and video)

Facebook post with video (archived)

News article on Napoli’s title win (archived)

Yahoo News article on event in Split (archived)

Instagram video from October 2020 (archived post and video)

Location where video was shot on Google Maps (archived)

YouTube video showing details that can be seen on Street View (archived post and video)

Video with claimed link to Turkey (archived tweet and video)

Tweet with claimed link to Turkey (archived)

Tweet claiming link to Stoke (archived tweet and video)

Tweet with separate video claiming link to Brazil (archived tweet and video)

Croatian news article about wrongly labelling the video (archived)

Croatian news article about footballer who wrongly labelled the video (archived)

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