5
P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
Speech XIV
It is for me a moving and happy experience to be back once again in the Principality of Asturias
and the city of Oviedo —a welcoming setting for the most splendid adventures of creation and
intelligence— to present the Awards that bear my name.
The emotion we experience during the present ceremony springs from the most intimate recess
of the loftiest human sentiment, for those who have received our Awards have replaced discord
with harmony, despair with hope, darkness with science, despondency with enthusiasm. Other
have led us with their imagination and art to the wonderful world of beauty, or dazzled us with
their prowess in the field of sports.
Of all of them it may be always said, as in that moving line of verse, that their heart has not
beaten in vain.
I deeply thank the Juries that have chosen the Laureates for the demanding efforts with which
they have carried out their delicate task, and the sensitivity invested in capturing the spirit and
goals of our Awards.
At this hour of gratitude, I wish to mention once again all of those who contribute decisively
to the aggrandizement of the Foundation: its Trustees and the authorities of the Principality, in
particular its President and the Mayor of this city. I am convinced that we may continue to rely on
their help to confront the new challenges that our institutions shall have to face in coming years.
My thanks also go out to the media, who are so often the vehicle of encouragement for the
highest achievements of our society. Their generous and efficient dedication helps us to spread the
message of our Awards.
Aurelio Menéndez, Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, is a fit heir to the tradition
of the University of Oviedo, where, during the transition between the present century and the
last, a group of illustrious professors advocated and achieved a renovation of the academic world
and an extremely fruitful presence in Spanish society, for they
dreamt for Spain a University that should be guided by merit,
innovation and openness.
The work of Professor Menéndez as a master of Commercial
Law has been extraordinary; without it, and his permanent
defence of human rights, it would not be possible to explain the
progress and renovation obtained in the field.
Circumstance also has it that he was an efficient coordinator
and guide of my university studies. In thanking him publicly
for his advice and for his generous dedication to perfecting my
education, I wish to remember with particular fondness and gratitude, now that I am in the final
stretch of my studies, all my teachers and tutors.
They have inspired me with the love for knowledge and beauty, the goodness of tolerance,
justice and the creative spirit of freedom. They also taught me that the advancement of learning
is what matters most; that is to say, the progress of culture, the trace that learning leaves upon the
spirit through continued study and training.
From his deep conviction that developing countries must face, often unaided, their own
problems, Doctor Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific
Research, was able, with the barest means and together with a devoted and enthusiastic team of
co-workers, to develop a synthetic vaccine that is revolutionizing the struggle against malaria.
Proof of the magnitude and importance of his discovery is to be found in the most recent data
published by the World Health Organization, according to which malaria affects between 200 and
400 million people, including three million children, most of them under five years of age, who die
“Those who have received our Awards
have replaced discord with harmony,
despair with hope, darkness with science,
despondency with enthusiasm.”
