Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches 3 The humanities are the soul of the University, their ideal centre, their conscience. If the soul is relegated to an ancillary role, the “soulless” or —at the very least— bleak University will lose its guiding role in intellectual life and in the country as a whole, which, lacking a compass, will randomly drift in the murky waters of particularism. Reflected and safeguarded in the humanities, Spanish Humanism is concerned with “flesh and blood man”, present in the meditations of Unamuno, the everyday preacher of complete humanization. Ortega took a stand against dehumanized art, while Eugenio d’Ors developed his Science of Culture around man who works and plays. From these and other teachers, we learned to live in the tangible and earthly, without forgetting that it is possible to fly: roots and wings, as Juan Ramón Jiménez put it. Ricardo Gullón — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 1989 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 21/10/1989. Laureates. Excerpts