Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

6 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | I am particularly grateful for the attendance of President Andrés Pastrana of Colombia at this ceremony, thereby emphasising how much his people admire the work carried out by the Instituto Caro y Cuervo. I wish to express to you that, in Spain, we suffer for the obstacles placed in the way of a promising peace process that has begun there as if they were our own; we pray for the process to be crowned by success as soon as possible. For the second time, the Jury has rewarded Britain’s fertile Hispanism in the figure of the historian Sir Raymond Carr, who has been granted the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. Objectivity, scientific rigour and an all-encompassing vision are some of the virtues that grace the life and work of this professor at the University of Oxford and Fellow of the Royal British Academy. As his colleague and fellow Prince of Asturias Laureate Sir John Elliot has said of him, Professor Carr has made a major contribution to our knowledge of the history of 19th- and 20th- century Spain. The following generation of historians, both in Spain and abroad, has benefited from the ground he has broken. His book on Spain between 1808 and 1939 and later published works has provided history with an innovative vision of contemporary Spain, placing it within a European context. He has contributed in this way to a better understanding both of the 1936 Civil War and the transition towards democracy. Beside his published works, which in themselves are proof of an extraordinarily gifted historian, one must stress the impetus he gave to updating Spanish historiography from his teaching post as head of St Anthony’s College at the University of Oxford. During this period, the College became a brilliant intellectual centre for the study of Spain and the Spanish world. Spanish and Spanish-American students who would later participate directly in political and cultural change in their respective countries were trained there. The intellectual stimulation fostered there by Professor Carr was indispensable to the success of such a creative and ever-influential task. The Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava has received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. His original interpretation of volumes, the use of new materials and techniques and the search for a youthful, innovative sense of aesthetics, alongside his enormous international prestige, have undoubtedly been determining factors for the Jury to decide in favour of his candidature. Imagination and obvious creativity are also unmistakable hallmarks of an architecture that is both so Spanish and so spectacular. His works share peculiarities and virtues of other art forms and fields of knowledge. This interaction is seen in the brilliant combination of architecture, engineering, sculpture, design and philosophy that make his work a lasting expression of contemporary utility and aesthetics. Santiago Calatrava has managed to combine exercising his profession with teaching theory at the Institute of Building Statics and Construction, in Zurich. The idea of the Renaissance masters for whom wisdom was the child of experience and of a love for work well done takes on modern-day relevance in the energy and versatility with which he has imbued his work. The Prince of Asturias Award for Literature has been bestowed upon the German writer Günter Grass, who we all also congratulate for his recent Nobel Prize for Literature. As the creator of new literary worlds, Grass is the author of some of the most significant novels to be written in the latter half of this century. In these novels, which often become metaphors and parables of modern society, the force and expressiveness of his prose scales the greatest heights. This is why he is recognized as one of those most actively involved in renovating the German language. Narrator of his times, moral authority for many, social critic, civic objector, intellectual swimming against the tide and committed writer are some of the hallmarks of a writer who has no wish to live in a somnolent age or society, a society in which there are no solutions to the problems that others prefer to cover up, ignore or simply not solve. This stance reminds us of what the great Portuguese poet Miguel “We can never stress enough, therefore, the importance of our language for both the peoples of Spain and and our sister nations across the Atlantic.” 22 nd O ctober 1999