The Princess of Asturias Foundation

He received the award in 1997 for the “multidisciplinary nature [of all his work], with an open, non-exclusionary approach, representative of a humanistic mind”.

Martín de Riquer y Morera, 1997 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. ©FPA

Martín de Riquer y Morera, 1997 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, has died.

The jury decided unanimously to confer the 1997 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences on Martín de Riquer y Morera. "Eminent philologist, literary critic and historian, he is one of our country's maximum authorities on Castilian and Catalan literatures, in addition to being a scholar of the Provençal and French traditions, especially from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. He is the author of studies on Ausiàs March, Boscán, Ramón Llull and Cervantes. Standing out among his many works are Cervantes y El Quijote, Introducción a la lectura de El Quijote, El Quijote de Avellaneda, Historia de la Literatura Catalana and Estudios sobre el Amadís de Gaula. All of his work is characterized by its multidisciplinary nature, with an open, non-exclusionary approach, representative of a humanistic mind that identifies with the entire cultural history of Spain, in all of its pluralities and vicinities. He is, all in all, a grand Catalan and Spanish intellectual.

The Jury for this Award was chaired by Manuel Fraga Iribarne and made up of Gonzalo Anes y Álvarez de Castrillón, Íñigo Cavero Lataillade, Eugenio Domingo Solans, Jaime García Añoveros, Manuel Jesús González, Francisco González Rodríguez, Luis González Seara, María del Carmen Iglesias, Aurelio Menéndez Menéndez, Manuel Menéndez Menéndez, José Manuel Otero Novas, Gregorio Peces-Barba, Victoria Rodríguez Escudero, Jordi Solé Tura and Juan Urrutia Elejalde, with José López- Muñiz y González-Madroño acting as secretary.

The Awards Ceremony, which took place on 24^th October, was presided over by HRH The Prince of Asturias. The speeches at the ceremony were given by Álvaro Mutis, Václav Havel, the President of Guatemala at the time, Álvaro Arzú, Yehudi Menuhin, the President of the Foundation at the time, José Ramón Álvarez Rendueles, and HRH Prince Felipe de Borbón.

The following is a list of the Laureates that year:

PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR CONCORD

Yehudi Menuhin

Mstislav Rostropovich

PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR COMMUNICATION AND HUMANITIES

Václav Havel

Cable News Network (CNN)

PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR LITERATURE

Álvaro Mutis

PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES

Martín de Riquer y Morera

PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH