SUR pays tribute to Malagueños of the Year at glittering awards ceremony

SUR has paid tribute to seven influential Malagueños who have made their mark in the province throughout this year at the newspaper's 24th annual awards.

At a gala organised by SUR and Unicaja Banco, this year's recipients received their awards at the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos in Malaga on Monday 18 December.

Cervezas Victoria, the city brewery that started its journey 1928, won the companies category. The culture award went to El Kanka, a local singer-songwriter who in recent years has become a big star and who this year filled the Teatro Cervantes for four consecutive nights. The tourism award went to Les Roches, considered one of the four most important hotel management schools in the world. Meanwhile, Javier Laserna, the professor of analytical chemistry and director of the UMA Laser Lab which took the name of Malaga to Mars, won the society award.

Natalia Baldizzone who, at the age of 23, continues to accumulate medals for her roller figure skating, received the award in the sports section, while Daniel Hierrezuelo, one of the great European basketball referees of recent decades, won the special lifetime achievement award.

Alessandra García, actress, theatre director, performer and cultural manager and winner of a Max award, was recognised as the revelation of 2023.

"Malagueña and exquisite". There is no Malagueño who does not have this slogan etched into their minds: that of Cervezas Victoria, a beer brand that, honouring its name, was born on 8 September 1928, the year in which the Franquelo family inaugurated the original factory of this drink that has become the heart and soul of Malaga city. After a history full of changes, the brand was bought by the Damm Group, which decided to relaunch it. In 2017, Cervezas Victoria was then produced in a factory in Malaga, coinciding with the 89th anniversary of the birth of the brand.

Les Roches is a Swiss institution founded in 1954 to forge innovative and entrepreneurial minds in tourism. It is considered one of the four most important hotel management schools in the world. In 1995 it opened its doors in Marbella and has a community of more than 16,000 alumni who hold key positions in all areas of business. During these almost three decades, the Marbella campus has helped launch the careers of students of up to 100 nationalities, competing with universities in the United States and Switzerland. In September last year, 275 more graduated from 65 countries.

At the age of 23, she has already won a world championship and two runner-up medals in the last three years. Her career at national level is even more spectacular, winning 22 gold medals in different disciplines. The Fuengirola local from skating club El Tejar, where she is already a very successful teacher, graduated in primary education at UMA amidst her sporting success.

He is a professor of analytical chemistry and director of the UMA Laser Lab, a laboratory participating in NASA's Mars 2020 exploration project, thanks to a world-leading technology that has been designed and developed by his research team. The technology is a chamber that recreates the atmosphere you would find on Mars and allows experiments to be carried out under the same conditions of temperature, pressure and solar radiation as those found on the red planet.

El Kanka, the singer-songwriter from Malaga has become a huge hit, without playing on radio, recording a label or appearing on prime time television. It is the triumph of perseverance and a job well done. Cosas de los vivientes, his fifth album, was a hit among the public with his four concerts selling out. In Malaga, he achieved the feat of selling out the Teatro Cervantes four nights in a row (only Raphael has done this for five nights in a row). His songs, full of metaphors and irony, have earned him a million monthly Spotify listeners.

She is an actress, theatre director, performer and cultural manager who has built a brilliant career from the ground up. Woman on a treadmill on a black background, is hers, the brave story of a girl from the neighbourhood who fights to make herself known on a wider scale. The play won three nominations for the Max Awards in 2022, taking home the silver apple. The Malaga city native was born in El Bulto and raised in Dos Hermanas. Today, in addition to performing and creating, she is a programmer at UMA and is in charge of the Autóctonxs festival, which will celebrate its second year at the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank with the support of Antonio Banderas.

He has been one of the great referees of European basketball in recent decades. Daniel Hierrezuelo from Malaga decided in 2023 to hang up his whistle after 33 years to accept the Euroleague's offer to become its head referee. This was the end of a long career at the highest level for the 53-year-old from Malaga. His life has always been linked to sport, although he started out in football, as a goalkeeper thanks to his height, and even played in the youth teams of Malaga CF. He studied physical education, but it was always clear to him that basketball, and specifically refereeing, was his speciality.

Behind him were 952 games in the ACB League, a long score of finals in this tournament, ten in the Copa del Rey and another six in the Euroleague Final Four. His farewell was in style, coaching the two best teams in the world, Spain-USA, in his beloved Malaga during the Centenary Tournament of the Spanish Federation held at the Palacio de los Deportes in the summer.