Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

2 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | 22 nd N ovember 1986 We, Spaniards and Latin Americans have shared 300 years of common history and, in these three centuries, the continent Columbus discovered has disappeared and been replaced by another, substantially different one. This is a continent which, though enriched with the contents of its pre- Spanish core and with what has come from other parts of the earth, mainly Africa, nevertheless thinks, believes, is organized, speaks and dreams within values and cultural parameters which are the same as Europe’s. Whoever refuses to see this has an inadequate view of America and of the West’s cultural horizon. After three centuries when there was but one, the nations that Spain helped to form and on which she left an indelible mark broke up into a myriad of countries which, in the midst of fortune and misfortune —more the latter than the former— are trying to shape for themselves a becoming destiny and towipe out those devils that have poisoned their history. Hunger, intolerance, iniquitous inequalities, backwardness, lack of liberty and violence, evils to which Spain is no stranger for they have damaged her, too. What history has united, governments often take apart. Our past, in America, is marred by stupid quarrels, which have left us bloodstained and impoverished to no purpose. But all the wars and dissension have not been able to penetrate deep; beneath the passing differences those links which Spain forged between herself and us, and among ourselves, and which time goes on strengthening remain unbreakable: a language, beliefs, institutions and a very wide gamut of virtues and defects which, for good or evil, make us relatives above and beyond our idiosyncrasies and differences. Mario Vargas Llosa — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 1986 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 22/11/1986. Laureates. Excerpts