Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

4 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | Prior to the contemporary age, the world had never been stage to such intense circulation of the peoples who inhabit it, or of so many encounters between citizens of different countries. The reasons for this movement of peoples and individuals are many. The celerity of communications boosts the prestige of artists and of the learned, of sportsmen and women and of activists for peace and justice, placing them within the reach of men and women from all continents. The current speed and ease of travelling nowadays invites the inhabitants of the rich countries to practise mass tourism, while globalization of the economy obliges the elite to be present in every corner of the planet and workers to move wherever they can find work. The population of poor countries tries by whatever means possible to access what it considers the paradise of industrial countries, in search of decent living conditions. Others flee from the violence that ravages their countries: wars, dictatorships, persecution, terrorist acts... For a number of years now, to all these reasons which motivate the displacement of populations have been added the effects of global warming and the droughts and cyclones it entails. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a million people will be displaced in the world for each centimetre that the ocean rises. The 21st century presents itself as one in which numerous men and women shall have to abandon their country of origin and adopt —either permanently or provisionally— foreign status. All countries establish differences between their citizens and those who are not: that is to say, foreigners. They do not enjoy the same rights, or have the same duties. Foreigners have the duty to subject themselves to the laws of the country in which they live, even though they do not participate in its management. Laws, however, do not tell the whole story: the framework they define includes thousands of daily acts and gestures that determine the flavour existence will have. The inhabitants of a country shall always treat those close to them with more attention and love than they do those whom they do not know. The latter, however, do not cease to be men and women like the rest. They are driven by the same ambitions and suffer the same needs; only that they are more prey to neglect than the former and plead for our help. This concerns us all, because the foreigner is not only the other; we were once the foreigner —or we will be—, running the odds of an uncertain fate: each one of us is a potential foreigner. Tzvetan Todorov — Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 2008 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences on 24/10/2008. 24 th O ctober 2008