introduced there medical branches with a slightly different system of rates
and services which are still in effect.

This department admits not only members of the club but their
wives and children. In 1939 it had 3,600 members besides being
available to the 2,000 regular club members. Both the West Tampa and
Ybor City branches have beds for emergency patients, staffs of doctors
and nurses, also a pharmacy, and electro-therapy equipment. Besides
hospital facilities for emergency medical and surgical cases, daily clinics
are maintained and medicines dispensed. Physicians also visit patients in
their homes. Serious and chronic cases are still sent to the general
hospital on the bayshore.

The dues for members of the branch medical department range
from 20 cents a week for children to 65 cents a week for adults.
The present investment of the association in real estate and
equipment is nearly $300,000.

By 1902 the Spanish population of Ybor City, then a separate
municipality bordering Tampa, had so increased that Centro Espanol
could not accommodate all who desired membership, and in that year
Centro Asturiano, second of the local Latin clubs, was organized with a
charter membership 546. This club was established as a branch of the
parent Centro Asturiano of Havana, Cuba, which was founded in 1886,
but the Tampa group, although still nominally a branch of the Havana
body, has become virtually self-governing.