Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches 7 Our missionaries bring us the consolation that we shall never be alone in our struggle against deprivation, social inequality, ignorance, disease or fear. Their testimony of sacrifice, austerity and poverty also serves as a reminder that wealth is not an end in itself; it must be subordinated to higher principles of greater solidarity, it must be firmly committed to the struggle against social ills that fill us with anguish and sorrow, such as unemployment. The Jury has justly mentioned the immense and dedicated world of lay volunteers in the missions. Some of them already received our recognition in 1991, by being ranted the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, together with Doctors without Borders and Medicus Mundi. A writer, a master and inventor of new roads, a cosmopolitan creator offering lyrical testimony of the world, Carlos Fuentes, is this year’s Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. His prose is permeable to the most widely varied themes. In it, races, social upheaval, freedom, power and always the fertile and complex realities of his own country, Mexico, transcend the page in their determination to become a vehicle for cohesion between the cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Already regarded as a classic, his work is one of the most innovative and dazzling of our times. Fuentes has expanded the meaning of our language in his great novels. The most vivid experiences are evoked and reconstructed in his writings. Experiences that subsequently come together admirably, sometimes monumentally, thanks to the author’s extraordinary verbal wealth, and its dimensions. All this expressed uniquely in a language that brings together so many nations, within the mysterious and endearing fraternity that springs from calling the same things by the same names from childhood. Carlos Fuentes has also spoken on equal terms with our own Miguel de Cervantes and assumed as his own the honesty and determination of that immortal character, Don Quixote. Like the early- rising and audacious nobleman, he does not flinch from commitment to times or events where justice, liberty and the dignity of human beings may be at risk. Few social phenomena have acquired the significance and scope of sport. The following, and especially the practice, of sport by young people is a peaceful and safe means of occupying time, in contrast with other social trends that often carry with them emptiness, dispersion or danger. We, the young, today seek and find in sport an ideal complement to our lives. It is therefore a great satisfaction that the Prince of Asturias Awards recognize the best international examples in the field. Distinction this year comes to a sport —tennis— whose individual character and highly demanding requirements represent the very limits of human effort and will, as symbolized in the figure and professional career of Martina Navratilova, 1994 Prince of Asturias Award for Sports. It is quite possible that the Greek poet was referring to her tenacious nature when, in praise of one of the ancient champions, he attributed success to “the effort of always adapting the spirit to the vicissitudes of Fortune”. The trials and difficulties that she had to overcome, her charisma, her powerful personality and her altruism have all contributed to making this sportswoman a living legend. Current affairs and last-minute news items might lead us to believe that human tragedy, in particular when it affects children, is limited to episodes such as those taking place in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, we know this is not so, and it is therefore highly significant that the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord this year remembers other children that also suffer and experience deprivation in other parts of the planet. Children that have deserved the attention and dedication of non-governmental organizations such as the Save the Children Fund, the Brazil’s National Movement of Street Children and Spain’s Mensajeros de la Paz. The Award acknowledges their fight against the deprivation and pain of the innocent, thereby expanding the human and moral interest and attention with which we wish to invest these Awards. The dereliction, coercion and violence that are still exerted upon children in certain parts of our planet indicate a degree of abjection that we would never wish to see again among human beings. This devotion to children, this disinterested and generous devotion of the organizations