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every year as a direct consequence of infection. The efficient and economic vaccine developed by
Dr Patarroyo and his team is struggling against this tragedy.
These researchers thus become a model of disinterested and generous dedication to humanity,
honouring the classical Greek statement that it is desirable to seek one’s good, but much more
beautiful and lofty to seek the common good. The admiration that this magnificent work awakens
in the whole world, and in his country in particular, was reflected in the generous comment of Dr
Patarroyo’s fellow countryman, Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez, whose presence here
this evening is a honour to us all. Upon hearing the news, he said that Dr Patarroyo’s award was the
most justly deserved in Colombian history.
Alicia de Larrocha, Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, is the model of an artist wholly
devoted to the service of her art and, by logical inclusion, to the service of human culture and
spirituality. Her life is as discreet as her great repute as a pianist is universal. The standard of
modesty that accompanies each of her actions and expression coexists alongside one of the longest-
standing and most solid reputations in contemporary musical interpretation. Sought out by the
most widely varied audiences, the itinerant nature of her existence forever flows back towards
her Spanish roots. From these, an undisputed mistress of her art, she has offered inspiration and
schooling through her personal review of classical and romantic European composers. For more
than fifty years, her fellow country-folk have enjoyed that higher art, taking particular pleasure
from its unequivocal Spanish substance and the naturalness with which she attracts the devotion
of audiences around the world.
It is in this universality that Alicia de Larrocha clearly reflects what is best in our most beloved
Catalonia, which its great poet Joan Maragall saw as a daughter of the mountains and the sea, of a
shepherd and a mermaid, in a Spain whose different tunes are
brought together in one single song.
A group of missionaries —apostles and witnesses of the
faith— in Rwanda and Burundi have stirred the most generous
and moving current of solidarity to be known for many years.
They nowadays represent a kind of disinterested and perilous
humanism that we sometimes, in our desolation, deemed
forever lost. Their belaboured life of sharing what they have
with those who have nothing teaches us that a world guided by
the prime force of solidarity is indeed possible. They have been
granted the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and
Humanities.
From her humble hospital in Kibuye, in the very heart of Africa, the anguished and courageous
voice of a missionary sister, Pilar Díez Espelosín, broadcast live on the telephone wire and over the
radio, alerted the world in the early mornings of April this year about the genocide that was taking
place in Rwanda, renewing once again the warning of writer Albert Camus that there is no longer
one single moment of isolated suffering, one single instance of torture in this world, that does not
affect our daily lives.
Racial fanaticism, which is at the bottom of the Rwanda tragedy, together with ideological
fanaticism, both religious and derived from extremist nationalism, is spreading over wide areas
of our planet with the blemish of war. The outcome of such conflict is distressing: it brings death
to thousands of innocent victims, while at the same time impeding the valuable and enriching
diversity of cultures and the legitimate defence of the identities of peoples, which may only flourish
within the framework of peaceful coexistence, when differences are brought together by concord
and opposing ideas by tolerance.
This Award wishes to recognize at the same time the immense task performed throughout the
world by so many missionaries who, through the fortitude of their faith, their compassion and the
joy of doing good, are prepared to live and even die for others, as recently proven by two sisters,
Esther Paniagua Alonso and María Alvarez Martín, who were murdered in Algeria.
“The dereliction, coercion and violence
that are still exerted upon children in
certain parts of our planet indicate a degree
of abjection that we would never wish
to see again among human beings.”
24
th
N
ovember
1994
