Córdoba, (EFE).- Veterans of the Civil Guard are organizing themselves to offer their experience and knowledge to the body, some assets that they consider wasted from a group that maintains more than 42,000 people retired in the whole of Spain, plus around another 10,000 that are in the previous step, that of the reserve.
On the last weekend of March, some three hundred veterans will meet in Córdoba at the initiative of the Cultural Association of Veterans of the Civil Guard of Córdoba, one of the four provincial associations that exist in Spain, although the only one that only integrates members of the Institute armed.
Carlos Camacho, a member of the entity’s board of directors and one of those responsible for organizing the meeting, told EFE that “the veteran in the Civil Guard, as in any other professional group with a certain training, is a wasted resource It is a cheap resource, in most cases, the civil guard just wants to keep his mind active, prolong his professional life a bit, and transmit everything he has learned ».
Wasted experience and knowledge
“That experience and that knowledge that you already have professionally are being wasted when we could be ambassadors for the institution itself and use that knowledge to transmit it to young people or any other type of activity,” he stressed.
Among the functions that this group could perform are, “as a simplistic example, talks on drug prevention or gender violence,” says Camacho.
A General Order of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard from last July regulates the institutional relationship with retired personnel and recognizes their right to “maintain, if they wish, a special relationship with the institution through their honorary secondment to the unit of your choice.
The provision is based on the fact that “it is necessary to start a process of institutionalization of the relationship, seeking a homogeneous treatment for the group as a whole, which establishes the necessary tools to favor their connection with the Body, with the aim of mitigating the eventual sensation institutional abandonment and contribute to the personal growth of these men and women.
Service with integrity and delivery
For Carlos Camacho, “since we joined the Civil Guard we have served the people with integrity, dedication and tremendous satisfaction.”
The president of the Cultural Association of Veterans of the Civil Guard, José Cabello, who has been assigned to the Córdoba Command from 1968 until his retirement, has experienced how “many people out of service” were in his facilities and how he is losing .
Three years ago, the then head of the Command, today General Juan Carretero, assigned to the General Staff, encouraged him to create the association.
Cabello argues that when a civil guard retires, he finds himself in “a strange world because he is not used to” the new social environment, generally displaced to a city where he is from, but where he has not developed his professional life.
In Córdoba there are approximately 1,200 retirees from the Civil Guard, of which two hundred are part of the association.
For Carlos Camacho, “it has been a constant concern for all retirees for many years because until today the civil guard, once he retired, forgot a bit about his projection, about his activity outside the force, because from the time this association was created and we began to see that we are scattered”.
Longer life expectancy and more inactivity
Like Cabello, Camacho believes that “once the civil guard returns to his place of origin he finds himself out of place, he has lost his roots and his friendships and they find themselves, especially in areas such as Andalusia or Galicia, typically communities of emigrants, quite alone and isolated».
In addition, he adds, “there is also the variable that life expectancy has increased and then there are many years that the retired civil guard remains without activity and with nothing that can fill his life.”
This is where the initiative to try to organize the collective began, something “very difficult because we are talking about more than 42,000 retired members between men and women”, but which is now being tried to articulate from the meeting in Córdoba, on March 25 and 26 , which “has generated an extraordinary illusion in the vast majority of colleagues who are already signed up to come today.”
The perspective is to create provincial organizations in the style of the association established in Córdoba and, later, a coordinator that serves to promote the transmission of experience and knowledge that is pursued, both to society and to the current members of the armed institute. EFE
