Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

10 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | and has always made highlighting its benefits for humanity one of its concerns. This is why we feel great satisfaction that this year’s Award for International Cooperation has gone to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. The representatives of this organization with us here today are a shining example of the fact that generous agreements guided by the general interests of mankind can still be reached. The Committee was founded to coordinate scientific research in Antarctica and to preserve this fragile, mysterious continent as a land for peace and science, and defends the interests of the whole planet in its work. The signing of the Antarctic Treaty was an important step forward, intended to establish measures to be taken that would be impervious to self-interested sharing out of land. Saving Antarctica from the avaricious exploitation of its resources and jealously guarding it for scientific studies and for peaceful progress are some of the highest aims that the international scientific community can pursue and achieve. Spain is one of the 32 countries running research programmes in Antarctica and has two science bases there, the Juan Carlos I and the Gabriel de Castilla , alongside two ships, one a research vessel, the Hespérides , and the other a support ship, the Las Palmas . We hope that today’s recognition of such ideals from Spain also serves as a call to highlight the many values that are encapsulated in the work being done right now in that beautiful, fascinating white continent. We hope this Award also helps governments and international bodies to dispose of the resources to carry on work that is so crucial to the future our planet. The men and women who are working tirelessly at the Antarctic research stations are the vanguard of a project that is fundamental to the lives of those that follow us in mankind’s centuries-old journey. Rarely has the work of just a handful of scientists safeguarded such a noble and essential cause in such an urgent and valuable way. According to an age-old definition of some beauty, music is the food of love and the most sublime of sentiments. It has brought together the outstanding Argentine performer and orchestra director of Jewish roots Daniel Barenboim and the American lecturer and writer of Palestinian descent Edward Said in a valuable project in favour of coexistence and peace, which has earned them the Award for Concord. Edward Said has taught us through his profound literary, historical and political analysis that we can only find a communion of projects, ideas and hopes to fortify man in his quest for happiness by knowing ourselves and others, by rejecting ingrained ideas that have sometimes served only to add to the confusion and by looking within ourselves without facile self-indulgence. Daniel Barenboimexemplifies in his person and his attitude the old, oft-repeated idea that music is the universal language par excellence, helping to break down barriers, eliminate geographical barriers and unite different races and mentalities; for this reason, it is an essential aid on the road towards concord. For in no way can we feel ourselves to be either responsible for —or heirs to— the errors of the past; nor can we futilely prolong their effects. This is why the examples of Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim point a way forward, which we should not flag in pursuing. Both have striven to find —in dialogue and humanism— the strength to maintain their belief in the possibility of mutual understanding between men. They have worked with tenacity and courage, recently setting up an orchestra made up for the most part of young Jews and Palestinians. It is a joint project in hope, art and expectations, which was, in fact, welcomed just last summer in our beloved Andalusia, a land forged by the merging of peoples and cultures and thus so sensitive to the values of concord and true peace. At a time when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony, the greatest Sephardic poet of the time, in luminous Granada, penned equally illuminating verse on friendship and fraternity, and the pain of its absence: If our hearts did not expect you to return Death would have taken us when we parted 25 th O ctober 2002