There are some things you know you should know, but just don’t. I felt this way when I first organised a meeting with Cecilio Fajardo, the head of Almuñecar’s Protección Civil.

“I’m sure I should know what Protección Civil is,” I thought to myself, “but I just don’t.” Having Googled the group beforehand, but still not being 100% certain who they were, my first question to Cecilio is simple: “What is the Protección Civil?”

As it turns out, Cecilio is the perfect person to pose this question to, having been with the Almuñecar branch since its inception. “I’m an original,” Cecilio says with a smile.

Cecilio is as warm as any Andalusian can be, but when it comes to the branch he’s been leading for over thirty years, he rarely strays from a serious tone of voice. “The Protección Civil is a volunteer group who are ready to support any professional, emergency service. Whether that be paramedics, police officers or firefighters.”

All volunteers have to undergo 44 hours of training, including first aid and fire fighting. “Fortunately,” Cecilio says, the kind of support they offer tends to be “during social events; that could be a Semana Santa procession or a football match.” Suddenly, the reason for his office’s location (round the back of Almuñecar’s football stadium) becomes clear.

But this is not to say that Cecilio and his team of 16 volunteers haven’t seen their fair share of danger. “Over my thirty years, I’ve seen things I never thought I would. We’ve had to help adults and children drowning in the sea, victims of a motorway-bridge collapse, paragliders…” and the list goes on.

I take a moment to look around the office. On the wall is what I can only describe as a radio, control centre fit for communicating with E.T. (and I’m sure the relevant emergency services as well!).

The air conditioning also rattles away, offering cool relief from the sweaty streets of Almuñecar. It’s at this moment I decide to ask Cecilio about the current heat wave suffocating Europe. “Climate change is here already. It’s inevitable,” says Cecilio. As a result, his team has already had ample experience dealing with locals collapsing from heat stroke and assisting firefighters with wildfires, for instance.

“But we shouldn’t just talk about wildfires,” Cecilio adds. “Brisk changes in temperature also affect the sea’s currents; who’s to say there won’t be more dangerous incidents out at sea as well?”

It seems fitting that such a group, local though it may be, is there to protect the community against a global menace. After some more Googling, I discovered that the Protección Civil is actually an international body, set up after the Second World War – to support the Red Cross. It started in Spain in the late 1970s.

In fact, Cecilio reminds me, “we are all part of the Protección Civil.” In theory, we all have a civic duty to protect our community’s most vulnerable.

That’s why it’s sad to hear that fewer young people than ever are interested in volunteering.

Cecilio constantly gets calls from students, for example, asking him “how much they will earn as a volunteer?” According to Cecilio, that’s not because young people have less money these days, they just have more expensive interests: owning a mobile phone, new trainers, PlayStations… “They would rather do a job they don’t like at all, that earns them a bit of money, than do something meaningful for free. There’s too much individualism around nowadays.”

“Relationships,” Cecilio continues, “used to be more social. Now, though, people don’t socialise outside of their friendship group and their social circles are really closed. There also isn’t a lot of contact between younger and older people either.” This is likely both a cause and effect of the shrinking attraction of volunteer groups among youngsters.

Sad though this is, the Protección Civil seems to be far from the only group of its kind that sufferers from the same issue. Cecilio explains how other organisations all over the country, like the Red Cross, have fewer people lining up to become volunteers. So, in the end, I found out exactly what Protección Civil is. It’s not only a group that protects communities from danger but it’s a beacon of civic engagement. Protección Civil tries to protect us from the invasion of the “individual.” And it will hopefully be around for a long time to come, to support strained emergency services, coping with ever-frequent incoming dangers.

(News/Feature: Protección Civil)