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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
