Benidorm commemorates one more year 'Poppy Appeal' with a Royal British Legion parade

For one more year, the Royal British Legion (RBL) has organized 'Poppy Appeal' parade in Benidorm, which took place at noon. The march started in Castellón street to Rincón de Loix along Paseo de Levante to the rhythm of the bagpipes and drums of the band ‘Torrevieja Pipes and Drums’.
Toni Pérez, mayor of Benidorm, participated in the event, which was presided over by the flags of Spain, the United Kingdom and the districts of the RBL, carried by the ‘Standards Bearers’. The "Chelsea Pensioners", pensioner soldiers from the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, also took part in the march.
The official act took place on Ametlla de Mar avenue where, in addition to the mayor, the national vice president of the RBL, Joe Falzon; the Defense Attaché of the British Embassy, ​​Captain Ian Clarke; the British Consul, Sara-Jane Morris; the RBL ‘chairman district’, Donald Cubbon; RBL Overseas Representative Bob Chambers and RBL Overseas Support Office Member Fi Hedges.
The mayor, in his speech, has expressed his "greetings and congratulations" on behalf of the city to the entire Royal British Legion in the celebration of the act "a tribute and for your centenary." The RBL was born in 1921 as an entity that formed other associations of veterans, licensed and demobilized soldiers in order to promote aid to those who provided arms service to the homeland and their families and dependents.
In fact, the emblem of the red poppy that presides over the event each year is "a symbol of both memory and hope in a future that we always wish in peace," said the mayor. The poppy icon comes from the vision, after World War I, of the fields of Flanders where many soldiers lost their lives and in which thousands of poppies stood out in the middle of large green expanses.
The poppy, Pérez recalled, is already a symbol that takes on "a special role" because it includes "individual experiences and personal demands" and whose celebrations begin every year at 11 am on the 11th of month 11 "in memory of the Armistice that ended the first great war ”.
"Those poppies, growing by the thousands and thousands, formed an immense tapestry of hope and became a symbol of confidence in tomorrow," said the mayor, who congratulated the RBL for its work "in this land that welcomes you and which is also yours ”.
Toni Pérez has also alluded to the months of the pandemic to praise the "support provided to compatriots" who reside in Benidorm both with telephone contacts, visits or support with the social services of the Spanish administrations "always fulfilling the mission for which you joined to The British Royal Legion ”.
The first mayor has finished his intervention giving encouragement "to continue for another hundred years and as many as the sacred mission of service to your principles demands of you."
The RBL is a non-profit organization that with the celebration of the 'Poppy Appeal' distributes 25 million fabric poppies, made mostly by people with functional diversity, and whose profits in the form of donations are used to help ex-military personnel and their families as a result of armed conflicts. It has more than 700,000 members worldwide, of which there are about 4,000 in Spain and more than a thousand in the province.