Your Majesties,
Excellencies,
Trustees,
Friends,

I especially greet this year’s Laureates: Welcome to this city, to this Principality, which —as you have seen!— receives you with great affection.

Allow me, in this age of immediacy, fleetingness, virtual realities and bits, to write a LETTER TO EACH LAUREATE. I invite you to attend this “viva voce mailing”, this communication reminiscent of pen and paper, between the Laureates and me. And I do so because, even though I belong to Gen Z and am the daughter of a Gen X and a boomer, I have the feeling that a letter allows one to stop, delve deeper and think more. And since we live in an attention economy, let us see if I can retain yours right now.

Here we go.

Dear Professor Draghi,
In 2012, as President of the European Central Bank, you said “[We will do] whatever it takes (..). And believe me, it will be enough”, a phrase that not only calmed the markets, but was also an act of confidence in the European project at one of its most fragile moments. Those words contained a deeper message than that of financial stability: the defence of European values, of solidarity between countries, and of the idea –no less valuable for being repeated– that together we are stronger. And I quote you once again: “The European Union is, above all, a mechanism for achieving the shared objectives of its citizens (almost 450 million people). It is our best chance for a future of peace, security, independence and solidarity.” The challenges are even greater today, Professor.

Dear Serena,
No one could understand tennis today without you. You transformed it into a faster, more explosive sport, into a way of life in which you had to challenge many conventions. The strength with which you have always played, your impeccable technique and those nearly 30 years as a professional at the highest level are impressive. You have shown us that greatness is not always about winning, but about the ability to get back on your feet, learn and move forward. And now, as a businesswoman, you continue to demonstrate that your competitive spirit is also reflected in life. It is so nice what you say about your sister, “Without Venus, there would have been no Serena.” The sisters in cahoots are our great travelling companions.

Dear Professor King,
Your work has led to the identification of a human chromosomal region harbouring a gene whose mutations predispose to breast and ovarian cancer. Subsequent work by other groups, including your own, have led to the discovery and validation of the first of these tumour-susceptibility genes that are of such scientific, medical and emotional importance. Yet your social commitment has gone even further, contributing your knowledge of genetics to reunite the grandchildren of those who were disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship’s repression. I can imagine how relieved so many grandparents must have felt.

Dear Madeleine and Antonio, representatives of the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico,
We recognize here today the importance of your institution, which cares for, exhibits, preserves and disseminates Mexico’s pre-Hispanic heritage and indigenous culture. You have just celebrated the museum’s 60th anniversary, although its origins date back 200 years. You vigorously project the strength of a people who look upon themselves with pride and who show the world their generosity in sharing their great history in an exercise of concord. Someday I hope to be lucky enough to enter Chapultepec Forest and admire more than three thousand years of history. And to see the Sun Stone. And so many examples of Olmec, Zapotec, Mayan, Mixtec life… Today, Mexico is most present here in the Campoamor Theatre.

Dear Graciela,
I cannot stop looking at your photo of that Zapotec indigenous woman with the iguanas on her head. And I imagine you in 1979, waiting patiently in Juchitán market for that woman and her iguanas to take on the form and expression that you wanted to capture forever with your camera. I just said “waiting” and “patiently,” by the way. These are not commonplace words these days. That is why you are not in a hurry as a photographer, in addition to your vocation as a writer, film scholar and avid reader. You are an artist who has captured the strength of women, that of the Zapotec woman with her iguanas, and also that of the Seri woman from Sonora, the Angel Woman who links the present and the future in that desert. I hope my fellow zoomers will take the time to gaze your photographs.

Dear Professor Massey,
Today we recognize your analysis of such a relevant reality today as human migration. The complexity of this phenomenon overwhelms us. You state that immigration comes with costs and benefits, and the problem is that the costs are disproportionately borne in the present and at the local level, while the benefits accrue in the future and at the national level. You have defended this notion ad nauseam with data, placing yourself into the centre of the political debate with attacks from different ideological quarters. Through academic rigour, you have contributed to rehumanizing the way people look at those who leave their own country. Your work allows us to fully understand the enormous challenge many governments face today with respect to immigration. You have broken down simplistic narratives and formulated migration policies based on data, not misinformation.

Dear Eduardo,
Well, you have provided me not only with happiness, but also with curiosity for words that those of my generation do not know. Examples include: maid, nincompoop, namby-pamby, sharecropper, scruff. After five decades of writing, you have shown that there are debates, like the one so prevalent about popular and cultured literature, which you dismantle through the reading of “The City of Marvels" or "The Truth About the Savolta Case”. Or any of your books. You call yourself a wordsmith, and you say it with the subtle, sarcastic humour of someone born and bred in Barcelona, garnished with a Cervantine veneer, a touch British, a touch New Yorker, and, from now on, also a touch Asturian. Your work is necessary. In order to know more, understand more, stop scrolling ad infinitum (you know, the endless dragging of your finger up and down the phone screen...) and allow an in-depth reading of your books that will enable us to make inferences and deductions. That will lead us to the analysis and discernment of reality. That is, to a better understanding of everything around us. And doesn’t that mean being freer?

Dear Professor Han,
Allow me to transgress your principles and refer to that emoji we have on our mobile phones where the little guy’s brain explodes. And now I ask you:

• If we live in a digital flock;
• If we have sold our soul to a device, if we are slaves to the screen, if we exploit ourselves to meet the demands of performance and productivity and we neglect reflection due to stimulus overload;
• If what is transcendent escapes us, if what we believe is freedom is only control, how do we, especially young people, recover TRANSCENDENCE so that life is not, as you state, the mere satisfaction of needs and the narcissistic exhibition —on social networks— of an optimism that we confuse with true hope amidst the noise of data and information and, hence, so far from true knowledge? You will understand that we are left with the emoji I referred to at the beginning of this letter. Let us seek the answer in your thought: accelerated time is not habitable, which is why you invite us to practice patience and introspection, among other things. And, above all, in-depth reading.

Having concluded my analogue tribute in the form of a letter to our Laureates, and being aware of the complexity that surrounds us and how these women and men have navigated it with their work and their lives, you will all agree that it is important to equip ourselves with good tools to confront that complexity. So it would not hurt to stir up some enthusiasm.

Maybe we should go back to the basics:

• To respect for those who think differently, for those who ARE different;
• To education, to valuing our teachers and considering our compulsory school time as a crucial stage in which everyone (government as well as civil society) must become engaged so that every free citizen may have opportunities;
• To not forgetting to take care (via responsible, gaugeable actions) of those who do not have it easy, the most vulnerable, the young people who struggle to get an education, to find a job, to have a home, the elderly who do not want to be alone, our children at risk of poverty;
• Perhaps we need to remember what it means to treat others well, to get out of the hole we have dug, to shake off fear, to come together to do things in a better way, to consider the fact that, if we do not look at others, we will not know how to build trust.

Coexistence is not easy, but it is the only way to achieve shared progress. It makes sense to protect and defend the values which define and guide us as Spaniards and Europeans (in fact, as citizens of any place). Trusting in these values means trusting in freedom over fear, in justice over arbitrariness, in democracy over intolerance, in the rule of law over the abuse of power, and in human rights over indifference. I realize that sometimes words spoken at a lectern can sound hollow, but I also know that it does not hurt to review and recall not only the nature of the difficulties, but also the solutions, and to insist that there are no magic formulas for managing this complexity. Today, the Laureates are helping fuel this enthusiasm.

Thank you very much.