Your Majesties, Your Highness, President of the Regional Government, President of the Foundation,

Excellencies, Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would especially like to greet this year’s Laureates and those from previous years who are with us here today at this very special ceremony. I have been the honorary president of the Princess of Asturias Foundation for ten years now, following the proclamation of my father as King of Spain. Although my sister and I have only participated in this ceremony since 2019, over the entire decade I have felt very close to the values that this foundation fosters. My affection and gratitude to our Trustees and all the people on the Foundation team and the Juries who work so hard so that we can meet here today in Oviedo to celebrate the best version of life.

Being in Asturias, coming to Oviedo each year and experiencing with you all the enthusiasm that can be felt during these days makes us feel both appreciated and loved in this land to which, as you know, I am linked not only by a title and all that this title entails, but which is also the land of my mother’s family. It is a land in which I feel very happy.

Pels voltants de setembre, abans que arribi el fred, compren el seu bitllet per al tren de l’esperança.

This verse was written by Joan Manuel Serrat 60 years ago now. It is in the song Els veremadors, the grape pickers, written in Catalan, and is a tribute to those forced to leave their homes to go grape picking in far off places. In Spanish, the lyrics go:

Around September, before the cold weather comes, they buy their ticket for the train of hope.

I quote this now because I like to think that, thanks to the work that we recognize here today, the extraordinary individuals sitting here on the stage of the Campoamor Theatre offer the contrary emotion to scepticism or despair: THE EMOTION OF HOPE. It is the sentiment that shows us that things can get better, that there is always a crack through which a light can shine. This is the hope conveyed to us by our Laureates, men and women who combine effort, dedication and excellence throughout their lives.

I have read what Ana Blandiana narrates about what happened in the prisons of the communist dictatorship of her country, Romania. Prisoners passed verses from cell to cell via Morse code as a form of resistance to hatred and madness. For me, for my generation, this fact lends poetry a role that we find difficult to imagine nowadays, but we can nevertheless understand this appeal to hope. When Ana was my age, she was not allowed to go to university. And she has not ceased to stand up to totalitarianism with her fresh, clear, refined poetry; together with her activism in defence of human rights and democracy.

This is also what the Franco-Iranian filmmaker, cartoonist and painter Marjane Satrapi has dedicated her life to. In her best-known work, Persepolis, she narrates a childhood and adolescence of repression in her native Iran. In her creations, Satrapi exposes the conditions she experienced in those years with her impressive talent to express the search for a more just and inclusive world, and that gives us hope. Moreover, she has dazzlingly reinvented the shared language of art and communication.

This link, this sentiment that unites us and furnishes us with an awareness of humanity, is what the Magnum agency projects with its work spanning almost eight decades. In this age of noise, haste and artifice, Magnum hones its gaze via its bold, truthful photojournalism, giving its photographers independence and lending history the imprint of fact. In the midst of the tumult of images, this pioneering photo agency captures the key moment and provides us with evidence for understanding the world, which should give us hope that we may increasingly achieve concord. Because it is often not easy to understand what is happening.

For this reason, the Organization of Ibero-American States is committed to providing the most vulnerable with the necessary tools to better address and understand life, to develop as fully-fledged human beings. That is, to achieve social development through education, science and culture. The OEI what we often hear turns into a reality, i.e. only education can transform societies, consolidate democracy and foster respect for human rights. I do not know whether there is anything more hopeful than that... Cooperation and multilateralism are the hallmarks of an organization that seeks the cohesion of the Ibero-American community of nations.

The Laureates for Technical and Scientific Research, Svetlana Mojsov, Daniel Drucker, Jeffrey Friedman, Joel Habener and Jens Holst, have found a way to cooperate in the field of endocrinology and have developed a tool that can help people with diabetes and obesity. In a world with almost 900 million people suffering from obesity and 540 million from diabetes, it would likewise be desirable to consider prevention as an essential public health strategy: therein lies great hope.

Carolina Marín has won unfailingly and has been exemplary all round. The most important thing is not that her years of effort, training and great achievements have taken her to the top in badminton, a little-known sport in Spain. The most important thing is that value lies not only in medals –even gold medals–, but in the attitude adopted in the face of both adversity and triumph that defines a great athlete. She says “I can because I believe I can.” And I assure you that, for those of us who are about to leave adolescence behind us, these are very valuable words.

3 We are here because our Laureates project the courage needed to overcome downheartedness and despair, a task that Michael Ignatieff also does very well. Not an easy task, considering the complexity of the social and political mechanisms behind coexistence and conflict. I have thought about this phrase of yours: “There are those who use democracy to destroy it.” And I have seen that you have spent four decades studying the rule of law, public liberties and individual rights; in addition to ideologies and nationalisms. For those of us who, like me, have just come of age, approaching Ignatieff's thinking is indeed challenging: a challenge that is attractive to us, because it speaks of shared values and the permanent challenge of living in harmony.

At this point, I come back to Joan Manuel Serrat, because this musician and poet from Poble Sec is much more than just an artistic reference for several generations to whom he has brought joy. He has also shown his commitment to democracy and tolerance. I have listened to many of his songs in recent days. And I have read his lyrics carefully. Serrat declares himself a partisan of life because, from time to time, life is further enhanced by the artist’s brush, giving rise to goosepimples. There are no words to describe what this offers to those who masters this art.

I hope that all of us, here today at the Campoamor Theatre, find reasons and opportunities and buy that ticket for the train of hope.

And of course, as you well know “fight for what you desire and do not despair if something does not turn out.” Today could be a great day, and tomorrow, too.

Thank you!