Sagunto City Medals 2026: Socoltie, UMP, Falla Cendoya, Pín and Rondán
A ceremony in Puerto de Sagunto handed out five municipal medals on 9 October: three to organisations (Socoltie, the Unión Musical Porteña and the Falla Luis Cendoya) and two to Margarita Pín and Paqui Rondán.
Puerto de Sagunto (coastal district) hosted the handing out of five City Medals on 9 October, the holiday of the Valencian Community. They went to a cooperative, Socoltie; a music society, the Unión Musical Porteña (UMP); a Fallas neighbourhood commission, the Falla Luis Cendoya; and two women with public careers, former MP Margarita Pín and the broadcaster and athlete Paqui Rondán. The venue was the Casa Municipal de Cultura.
Mayor Darío Moreno began his speech by saying that some places hold history, others hold memory, and Sagunto holds both. This year the date carries extra weight, he explained, because 750 years have passed since the death of King James I (Jaume I). The monarch died in Valencia on 27 July 1276, after sixty-three years on the throne, the longest span of any king in the history of Spain. Moreno recalled the drive for justice and for protecting the humble that is attributed to the sovereign, and added that Saint Denis' Day is also celebrated today, a good occasion to show affection for the people beside us and for our land.
The anniversary recalls the day James I entered the city of Valencia, whose conquest had begun on 21 April 1238. As a celebration for the whole region it came much later: the idea came out of a 1976 agreement of the Table of Political and Trade Union Forces, and the 1982 Statute of Autonomy included it under its current name.
Moreno saw in the five winners a reflection of what the city has been, is and aims to be: solidarity with those in need, equality, artistic creation, festive tradition and music.
Rondán Martí has several sides. In 1994 she was named Saguntina of the Year for her athletics career, an honour shared with Mariola Pérez, and years later she chaired the Club Gimnasia Sagunto. Her time at Canal 9 included the news and Babalà, a programme for children and young people that Valencian television broadcast between 1990 and 2009. In 2001 she gave the opening speech of the city's patron saint festivities and was the first woman to do so; in 2022 and 2023 she acted as mantenedora (host) of the New Year's Eve chimes. On stage she played the lead in “Sónnica i Acteón”, with Toni Llorens as her co-star, and in 2018 she co-founded the Sagunto company Acteonica Teatre with him and Albert Forment. It is now 25 years since that 2001 speech.
Pín represented Valencia in the Congress of Deputies for four legislatures, within a span of fifteen years from 1996 to 2011. In Sagunto she worked from the neighbourhood movement and from the council, where she took part in shaping local policy and promoted channels of participation. One of them was the Municipal Council of Women, which she helped create as a permanent space for proposals and advice. The medal also rewards her work for children, for people who depend on care and for other vulnerable groups, and her commitment to diversity and Roma culture, with which she keeps ties through the Institute of Roma Culture.
In 2025 the Generalitat declared Socoltie a cooperative of public utility, and the city medal now adds to that backing after more than forty years in the city. The organisation started in 1982 and gained legal form in 1983, so it has 44 years of activity. It is non-profit and runs on a cooperative basis: it supports people with an intellectual disability or other functional diversity so that they gain independence and find work, and it backs their relatives. It runs an Occupational Centre with 45 places, opened in 1984, and a Special Employment Centre dating from 1986.
The UMP was born in 2004 as a non-profit cultural association, which makes it the youngest of the three organisations honoured. It combines music classes with groups of different formats (bands, orchestras, choirs and modern-music groups) where people of any age fit, and its school is the training ground for those ensembles. Its Youth Band took first prize and the audience prize at the third edition of a youth competition named in honour of Francisco Fort. It also helps keep alive the legacy of Valencian music societies, which have official recognition as intangible heritage.
The first monument of the Falla Luis Cendoya that appears in municipal records dates from 1927, that is, 99 years ago, and was set up on Poeta Llombart street in the Port. The commission has grown tied to the working-class, industrial side of the neighbourhood. It has made a name in the Fallas scene through prizes won with both its large and its children's monument, and also with its llibrets (festival booklets), the commission's festive books.
The actress Diana Bernal hosted the gala. Vicent Ortolà and Mariola Ponce, of the shadow-theatre company Teatres de la Llum, were in charge of the staging and turned the building into a play of lights. On stage were also a dancer, a group of Socoltie users and two teachers from the UMP. In the hall were municipal and police authorities, the Falleras Mayores (festival queens) of the Federació Junta Fallera de Sagunt (FJFS), shopkeepers and delegates of regional societies and other groups.
Anyone following local news already knew the names. According to aytosagunto.es in August 2026, that month's ordinary plenary session unanimously granted the distinctions to Socoltie and the UMP. On 4 September the same outlet reported that Pín, Rondán and the Falla Luis Cendoya would be next, with the same unanimous backing. Today's ceremony closes the process.
According to aytosagunto.es, with data from Wikipedia on James I, Valencian Community Day and Babalà.