On Friday, Calp celebrates 9 October, the day of the Comunidad Valenciana, with the institutional act of awarding the "Jaume Pastor i Fluixà" prize and the city's medals of honour, which are awarded each year in recognition of the work of persons or institutions that have contributed to improving society. In this edition, the event will be held in the Plaça Major and with limited attendance, although the event can be followed on the City Council's social networks.
At its plenary session last August, the City Council unanimously decided to award this year's Jaume Pastor i Fluixà - 9 d'Octubre Prize to the Calp Health Centre. In this way, the town wishes to acknowledge the work of the centre's staff and the unconditional commitment of all its professionals, doctors, nurses, assistants and other health workers who have helped the citizens of Calp during this pandemic.
It was also agreed to award Isabel Signes the Medal of Merit for Civic Merit. Signes is the founder of the Calp-based NGO Visió sense fronteres (View without Borders), which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. She is a committed person with a vocation to serve, and through this NGO she promotes numerous campaigns every year to prevent and treat preventable blindness in third world countries. In these 20 years, the NGO has reached more than 100,000 people, performed more than 8,000 cataract surgeries and donated more than 35,000 pairs of glasses.
The medal for sporting merit goes to Vicente Esquerdo Santas, a footballer from Calpe who made his debut in the first team of the Valencia C.F. last season. He is the first player in the youth team of Calpe C.F. to make it to the first division of Spanish football. In addition to the Calpe ranks, he played as a junior player in the Benidorm and Valencia teams.
Jesús Pastor Tomás is awarded the Medal of Tourist Merit. Pastor Tomás is a well-known businessman who began his career as an insurance agent with Dapa Seguros, which later changed its name to Pastor Tierra Correduría de Seguros. He also founded the car rental company Pastor Rent a Car, now known as Neptuno Hires. Both companies are the oldest in Calp in their sector. He is an entrepreneur who has contributed to the growth of tourism in Calp with his companies, which are now run by his children.
The Medal of Cultural Merit will be awarded to José Manuel Gómez y Rodríguez, publisher and president of the Anaya Group since 1998. He was involved in the creation of the first two publishing houses of the Anaya Group: Ediciones Cátedra and Ediciones Pirámide, and in the expansion of the group. He is closely associated with Calp, as he has a residence in the town. He has also made several book donations to the municipal library. In 2010, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit for Services to the Fine Arts by the Council of Ministers in 2010.
The medal of merit for entrepreneurs is for the Jorro brothers; it is a recognition of 70 years of business career. They began their commercial activity in the 1950s in a soda and siphon factory founded by their father, Juan Jorro Sapena. Later they dedicated themselves to the distribution of drinks to wholesalers, mainly restaurants and bars. In 1983 they founded their first shopping centre in the food sector, JOVIMA, a pioneering initiative in Calp at the time, as it was a large supermarket with 50 employees, a company that expanded with another five supermarkets in the province. Now that they have retired, their centres continue to operate under different brands: Caprabo, Eroski, Dia...
The youngsters Teo Zaragocí and Elías El-Hani, who will receive the Premi Jove (Youth Prize), are both students at IES Ifac who, in the fourth year of their ESO studies, achieved an average of 10 points in their academic career.
Finally, the Honour Tie will be awarded Solera Artística. This is a non-profit association of dance, music and theatre in the popular Andalusian style. The association was founded in 2009 to promote the interest of its members in these artistic disciplines. They not only promote culture, but also have a charitable vocation. Every year they organise a festival to collect donations for organisations or people in need.
Before the awards ceremony, the Colla de Xirimiters del Carellot de Calp will perform accompanied by a group of folk dances. There will also be a commemorative manifesto of October 9 will be read, whose text has been agreed upon by all political groups.