Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches 9 joy to Spaniards when an institution or a person from Latin America receives one of our Awards, as is the case this year with the conferral of the Award for Communication and Humanities on the National Autonomous University of Mexico (or unam, as it is commonly known). unam, “the soul of Mexico”, as it has been called, is much more than just a university in the traditional sense of the word. It has extended its exemplary work beyond its lecture halls and has created a far-reaching network of cultural institutions and media to disseminate the values of the deepest university spirit; that is, the passion for knowledge and the love of teaching in freedom. In this way, it has contributed decisively in structuring, opening up and modernizing a society which, without the existence of unam, would undoubtedly be less prosperous and much less dynamic. But unam has also passed on to Mexican society and to that of many other Latin American countries reverence for justice, tolerance and democracy, which have pervaded the works of the best intellectuals, teachers and artists who have passed through its lecture halls and who represent the elite of Latin American thought. Just as we are about to hold a new Ibero-American Summit in Estoril devoted to “Innovation and Knowledge”, we put unam forth as an outstanding example of the great academic capacity and scientific level of so many Latin American countries. At the same time, in Spain we shall never be able to forget the enormous generosity unam extended towards our fellow countrymen and women, who, after the Civil War, were forced to seek exile in American lands under difficult, bitter conditions. It offered them its lecture halls, its publications, its research institutes and all kinds of assistance that contributed to enabling these “exiled, weeping Spaniards” —as one of them called them— to remake their lives with dignity and contribute, perhaps, more than a mere modicum of prestige and academic brilliance to the University itself. There will never be occasion enough to proclaim our deepest gratitude, which we do so once more here today in the presence of its Rector, José Narro. Nothing would be the same for many human beings without the daily use of the mobile phone and electronic mail: e-mail. Their respective inventors, the electronic engineers Martin Cooper and Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, have received the Award for Technical and Scientific Research. A pioneer and driving force behind wireless communications, Martin Cooper had already commenced his findings in 1954 with the development of portable radio systems and, two decades later, was to make the first call from a mobile phone; while Raymond Samuel Tomlinson used the well-known @ symbol in October 1971 to separate the name of the recipient of the mail from that of the computer receiving it, thereby making communication between different computers possible. Thus was born e-mail, a means of communication now as familiar as the mobile phone. Free-flowing communication is one of the greatest achievements of our day and the mobile phone and e-mail, in particular, are two of the most significant technological innovations of all time. As such, the depth of their social impact is yet to be fully known. The rapid and valuable spread of communication that these two prodigiousmedia have achieved provides innumerable benefits. Consider how they serve and help in the fields of health, education, public and business management; how they constitute an opportunity or tool for modernizing underdeveloped countries. Consider how they bring down barriers between countries and ideas, how they comprise an ideal medium for spreading culture, how they have disseminated and democratized information and communication in an extraordinary way, intensifying and facilitating relations between human beings on a universal scale. For all these reasons, Martin Cooper and Raymond Samuel Tomlinson take their place in the great annals of world science and also, from today, in the particular and beautiful history of our Foundation. The Award for Literature has been bestowed on the Albanian writer Ismaíl Kadaré, one of the creators who has most intensively lived and suffered a titanic struggle between extremes, the tension between his literary creation and the social and political problems of his time, especially of his country, martyrized by a calloused, closed political regime. Dedicated to literary creation with a passion that these extremely harsh conditions have not mitigated, he has also known how to masterfully open it up to the world.