Lech Walesa, a former Polish president and leader of the Solidarity union that played a leading role in the fall of communism, is hospitalized with an infection and will remain for at least a week, his spokesman said on Monday.
Walesa, who was an electrician at a shipyard in the port city of Gdansk, became a symbol of the historic changes that ended the Cold War, leading the Solidarity trade union movement, which ushered in the shift to a free market economy in 1989. .
On Sunday, Walesa posted on Facebook (NASDAQ: META ) a photo of himself lying in a hospital bed with a caption that read: “It happens often.”
A spokesman for the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate told Reuters Walesa had an infection and would remain in hospital this week, but declined to provide further information.
Walesa came down with a COVID infection in January. In recent years, she has suffered from health problems and underwent heart surgery in 2021.
He was president from 1990 to 1995, the first of post-communist Poland.
In recent years he was a staunch critic of Poland’s ruling nationalists, Law and Justice (PiS), which in turn have been sharp critics of Walesa’s transition from communism to a free-market economy.
