Luis Díez del Corral and Luis Sánchez Agesta Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 1988

Luis Díez del Corral y Pedruzo (Logroño, España, 1911 - Madrid, España, 1998), university professor and academic, he studied in the Law and Arts faculties of the Central University of Madrid, gaining the exceptional graduation prize in Law. He later extended his studies at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. In 1936 he passed the selection examination for the post of Legal Advisor to the Council of State, and in 1947 to the chair of History of Political Forms and Ideas at the University of Madrid.

In 1954 he published El rapto de Europa, a historical interpretation of our times and a work which has been translated into English, German, French, Dutch, Japanese and Italian. Along similar lines, in 1957 he published La función del mito clásico en la literatura contemporánea. For three years he held the post of cultural concierge at the Spanish Embassy in Paris.

He was chairman of the Royal Academy of Political and Moral Sciences, member of the Royal Academy of History since 1973 and member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando since 1977. An advisory counsellor for Revista del Occidente, Díez del Corral has given many lectures and courses at a number of European, American and Japanese cultural centres and universities. An outstanding example is the course he gave in 1950 at the Humanities Institute, directed by José Ortega y Gasset, on "The mixed regime as an idea and as a political form," as well as the 1968 course at Notre Dame University, USA on "The political formation of Tocqueville," and that given in the College of France on "The Spanish monarchy in European political thought: From Machiavelli to Humbolt" (1966).

Other works of his are: Mallorca, winner of the 1942 National Literature Prize, El liberalismo doctrinario (1945), Ensayos sobre arte y sociedad (1955), Del Nuevo al Viejo Mundo (1963), La mentalidad política de Tocqueville con especial referencia a Pascal (1965), La Monarquía española en el pensamiento político europeo. De Maquiavelo a Humbolt (1976), Velázquez, la Monarquía e Italia (1979) and El pensamiento político de Tocqueville (1989).

The works of Díez del Corral, of international importance, have made an exceptional contribution to a greater understanding of the history of political forms and ideas.

He is a doctor honoris causa of the University of the Sorbonne, Paris, and holds the Gold Medal of Rioja.

Luis Sánchez Agesta (Granada, Spain, 1914 – Madrid, Spain, 1997) was doctor in Law and professor of Constitutional Law. With a doctorate from Madrid, he was already a university lecturer in Granada at the age of twenty.

After the civil war, and having spent a time in prison, in 1942 he obtained the chair of Political Law at the University of Oviedo, later moving to that of Granada, where he would be appointed rector in 1951.

Ten years later, in 1961, he moved to Madrid as professor of Political Law. In June 1968 he was designated chairman of the promotion committee of the Autonomous University of Madrid and in 1972 he became its rector. He has also been a councillor on the Madrid city council, and belonged to the privy council of the Count of Barcelona.

The author of numerous political and legal works, in 1974 Sánchez Agesta was appointed as chairman of the National Council of Education.

After having been a procurator of the "Cortes" (Spanish parliament) and elected Counsellor of State, in 1977, the year in which he obtained the chair of Constitutional Law, he was appointed as Senator of the new parliament by HM King Juan Carlos I.

He is also a member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation, that of Political and Moral Sciences and the Academy of Law of Buenos Aires.

A visiting lecturer at the universities of New York and of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, his research activities centred on Constitutional and Political Law, with a long list of publications, among which the following may be mentioned: Teoría de la constitución, Curso de Derecho Constitucional, La ciencia política en España, Historia de la monarchy en España, Doctrinas constitucionales en Europa, Derecho Constitucional comparado, Principios de teoría política, Historia del constitucionalismo español, El pensamiento político del Depotismo Ilustrado, España al encuentro de Europa, Historia de la monarquía española, and some two hundred other works, published in academic journals.

He was a doctor honoris causa of the universities of Mendoza, Argentina; Bordeaux, France and Granada, and a "Distinguished Teacher" of the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

Sánchez Agesta established a school of constitutionalists in Spain, even when the Spanish Constitution did not exist, while promoting the School of Sociology of Granada and training sociologists in the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the Pontifical University of Salamanca and the Leo XIII Social Institute.