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We find ourselves before two men who are admirable models of intellectual altruism and moral
strength, two men who, with painful frequency, have experienced in the flesh the idea that the
destiny of innovative and incorruptible beings is solitude.
IndroMontanelli is a key figure in the European journalismof our century, both as a contributor
and reporter, and exercising the highest responsibilities at the head of media companies.
Passionately, intelligently and with great doses of integrity and courage, for nearly half a century
now, Montanelli has represented the independent voice; the voice opposed to allowing itself to be
swept along by currents or ephemeral fashions, sometimes even in highly difficult situations for
his country.
In times of confusion and uncertainty, many Europeans have felt themselves guided by
Montanelli’s stance, by his penetrating analysis of reality and his shrewd warnings against self-
seeking deceptions and mistakes.
Perhaps the profoundness of his convictions and the ardour with which he has always defended
them come from his deep love of history which, as Cicero said, is “the witness of the ages, the light
of truth, the life of memory, the master of life, the herald of antiquity.” For this reason, Montanelli
can tell us what the ultimate causes of what we did were and what it is that we should never repeat.
The award to Julián Marías only minimally rewards his innumerable merits. A disciple of
Ortega y Gasset, to whom he has dedicated many illuminating pages, he has always developed his
thinking along an unsullied intellectual path.
Born of an insatiable curiosity, his works have embraced different aspects of human activity,
from anthropology to history, from literary essays to the dense paths of metaphysics. In any case,
Julián Marías has provided renewed perspectives on man and his place in society, convinced that
philosophy, which must be at the service of life, is the discipline which places man at the summit
of creation.
Marías has rendered intelligible the grand singularity of Spanish history, a close and
inseparable area of coexistence, whilst reclaiming the essential need to preserve and reinforce our
ties with America. He has also made frequent reflections on the process of European union, on its
enlightenment and darkness.
A good part of his thought has seen the light in the form of articles in the press, in such a
way that, for most of his readers, his ever-clear ideas, always explained nobly and simply, have
constituted a constant aid and inestimable intellectual and ethical example.
The Prince of Asturias Award for Literature is already in the hands of Francisco Umbral.
There can be few cases such as his of the “pure” writer, in whom life and literary creation become
confused. With the devastating clarity of the great creators, he shows us the importance of literature
in modelling our vision of the world and of man and in collaborating decisively in the education
of human sensitivity, one of the keys to authentic progress.
Umbral is an artist of the word, who appears day after day on newspaper pages to offer us his
point of view on the news, wrapped up in an extraordinary verbal ingenuity.
With writing which is at the same time both cutting and tender, he can caress our consciences
with his word and he can lash them, like a whip. He can, and he knows how to do so, rise to the
summit of poetic feeling or penetrate the most recondite corners of vocabulary at a brazen pace.
Francisco Umbral’s journalistic work is only a part of his copious work, which offers us novels
of a desolate and lyrical intensity, harsh portraits of the underworld of Madrid or new national
episodes which, whilst still being local literature, illuminate Spain’s recent history with lightening
intuitions.
The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts this year recognizes in the Valencian Joaquín Rodrigo,
a body of work which is a paradigm of all that is artistic. This magnificent composer, whose figure
honours our land and who is represented in this ceremony by his daughter due to his delicate
state of health, unites with originality and elegance that which is popular with the cultivated, the
traditional and that which is new.
To pronounce his name is to invoke music in its pure state. Millions of people all over the
8
th
N
ovember
1996
