Rotary Club Malaga: Influencers with a cause on the Costa del Sol

They are shrouded by a veil of mystery that this article may help to clarify. That special aura is justified. For one thing, not everyone can become a member of a rotary club. They also make use of a special symbology, rituals, things that set them apart. They perform an invocation to begin each weekly meeting held. Then a bell is rung at the end. But they also have a social mission and a vocation to serve through which they make themselves very visible in the communities where they are present, which is almost all of them. Their influence stretches along the Costa del Sol to Malaga city itself.

The Rotarians, the original Rotary Club, were founded in Chicago in the early 20th century by a group of lawyers including Paul Harris. Their birth followed the economic crises of the late 19th century and their philosophy was based on self-help and mutual support. This is how Juan Paulo Gómez, president of Rotary Club Malaga, explains it to SUR. He is the principal leader in the city because there are four clubs in Malaga. Within the Rotary district of which Malaga is a part of the three districts in Spain, bringing together Andalucía, Murcia, part of the Levante, the Balearic Islands and Ceuta and Melilla, there are a total of 106 clubs, some of which have up to 90 members as with Marbella.

The name 'rotary' comes from the fact that the pioneers of this organisation did not have a fixed headquarters, so they rotated their meetings across the offices of its members, explains Gómez. In honour of this name, the offices of each club and those that the organisation has at world level today also rotate and change every year. The current president of Rotary Club Malaga wears a chain with the names of all his predecessors written on it during his term of office. That's why the transfer of the mandate is called a change of collar. He also wears a special insignia for the contributions he has made to the club, not only financially, but any made in addition to the ordinary contributions. The ordinary contribution is a monthly fee of 55 euros paid to support the functioning of the club. Since their birth at the beginning of the 20th century, Rotarians have spread throughout the world. Curiously enough, one of the first places where they landed was Spain, due to its links with the Anglo-Saxon world.

In Malaga, the club where SUR is meeting happens to be the oldest in the city, dating back to 1927. Yet its history in the province, and indeed in Spain as a whole, suffered a long interruption. Franco's dictatorship declared the Rotarians illegal, as he did with Freemasonry. They are sometimes compared to the freemasons because of the sense of mystery they share and the influence and power attributed to them. However, these were not the only groups to be made illegal: political parties and trade unions were banned except for those that sustained the authoritarian regime. So this international network had a historical vacuum in Spain from 1939 to the 1970s. Then it was precisely with its reactivation in Spain, once democracy was restored, that women began to be able to join, as at the beginning membership was restricted to men.

Still, restrictions of a different kind have been maintained. For example, although youth groups are promoted, to join a club you have to be over 30 years of age. Also relevant, influential profiles are sought in each sector of activity, the reason being that Rotarians want to have influence and access to authorities and powers in order, they say, to make it easier for them to develop their projects. The book 'Los rotarios en Málaga (1927-1936). Un espacio de tolerancia, proceso y solidaridad al filo de la Guerra Civil', published by Fundación Málaga, reveals that important figures of the time, such as Jiménez Lombardo, Guerrero Strachan and Temboury were Rotarians. It also narrates that they promoted infrastructure developments such as the airport as well as projects in welfare.

"We use our influence for projects that benefit the local community." This is how they sum up their philosophy. Mariem Ahechti, secretary for Rotary Club Malaga, recalls that their motto is "Give of yourself before thinking of yourself": "This is the essence of Rotarian service; those who serve best benefit the most; we are united to serve." They mention some recent examples of their work. To begin with, as the club is chaired this year by Juan Paulo Gómez, they have made use of his profession as director of Malaga's Provincial Youth Orchestra to develop the 'Orchestra Without Limits' project in Castañetas, in Campanillas district of Malaga. The project provides musical training to young people from this disadvantaged part of the city.

In addition, based on their collaboration with two other clubs in the province, Malaga 1927 and Axarquia, they are organising an event on 24 October to commemorate the day against polio and the fight in which the collective is historically involved to eradicate this disease. Ticket sale proceeds will be used for this purpose. Tickets cost 25 euros and there are cups on sale for 10 euros for those who do not attend the event. "When Rotary began its work against the disease, 900,000 children were paralysed every year. Now there are only nine cases of polio a year," explains Miguel Such, who is a doctor by profession and treasurer of Rotary Club Malaga.

There is also cooperation between clubs in different countries. For example, in Tetouan, Morocco - Mariem Ahechti is originally from that country - they are going to participate in a benefit concert to raise funds for the association 'La Cuna de la Inocencia', whose mission is to help abandoned children at the Sanita R'mel Civil Hospital in that North African city.

Do Rotary club members actively search for relevant, influential, powerful profiles in their community, do they try to recruit interesting people in order to have more power in the city, in the region in which they operate? Their answer, in the first instance, is that their influence is neither political nor for personal gain: they try to use their leadership and professional skills and those of their members to "solve social problems in their communities." They then explain that the process of including new members is actually quite natural: they talk to their friends in the club, in the international Rotary network and, if someone is interested, they are invited to a few meetings. If they finally decide to join as a member, they are assessed as to whether they have the required vocation of service, and then the members of the group vote for or against their inclusion.

Malaga has also become a melting pot of cultures and people of many nationalities, with communities of Germans, British... some with a greater Rotary tradition than Spain, if only because they did not have 40-year dictatorships that banned their presence. What happens to them? Well, when a person is a member of a Rotary club in another country, they can take part in the meetings of the club in their place of residence. However, in order to become a member they have to give up their membership in their home group to join the club in the place where they have chosen to reside.

The international vocation of the Rotarians does not stop there, as the organisation also takes advantage of its international presence to develop a kind of global Erasmus programme in which 9,000 young people participate each year. The Malaga Rotary Club invited a SUR team to attend one of its meetings and two of the three young people who have come to Spain on behalf of this club - there are more than 30 in this Rotary district as a whole - were present: Connor Fitzpatrick, a Canadian, and Daniela Hahn Albes, from Brazil. Both wear jackets with the Rotary crest stitched on the chest and dozens of badges representing different countries: "Each badge is linked to a person I have met and their country of origin. All of these people are Rotarians," says Fitzpatrick. His parents don't belong to a club, but Albes' parents do. So membership may or may not be passed on from generation to generation.

For these displaced young people, the Rotarians take care of finding them a host family, an educational centre and give them all kinds of support, because they have tutors who accompany them. "This programme is our way of contributing to peace," explains Belén Sánchez, former president of the club and in charge of managing the youth exchanges. Their youth work also includes what they call RYLA: the youth leadership seminars in which thousands of teenagers and twenty-somethings participate.

The meeting attended by SUR, which is held every Wednesday at the Hotel Vincci Posada del Patio, begins with the ringing of a bell and an invocation by the president, who wears the chain around his neck with the names of all his predecessors and he ceremoniously greets all Rotarians around the world. From this point onwards, the agenda unfolds, which in this case includes, in addition to matters relating to the polio event, the sale of Christmas lottery tickets to raise funds and the organisation of one of the club's star events, the awarding of the Premio Huella, the prize given by Rotary Club Malaga to people, institutions or companies that have made the city a better place to live in. At a ceremony to be held in April they will recognise the work of the Interactive Music Museum and Felipe Romera, president of Malaga TechPark. But these Rotarians don't just give awards. They also receive them. One such award they have just celebrated is the one they have been given for presenting a project to disseminate how to perform cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the home, because a large volume of cardiac arrests occur in the home.

People with influence and power. And with relevant social projects. And with an international network that they create and nourish by holding meetings in different parts of the world and with exchanges of young people who seek to ensure the generational handover so that their history, which has already exceeded a century, goes on into the future. Theirs is all about praxis - doing positive stuff - but without forgetting the ceremony, the symbols, the insignia that identify them and also deliver the right level of mystery. Enough to arouse the curiosity of the layman. It is the same sense of mystery that surrounds other types of organisations, all with their customs and traditions, such as the church, political parties, trade unions and even football teams.