P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
9
joy to Spaniards when an institution or a person from Latin America receives one of our Awards,
as is the case this year with the conferral of the Award for Communication and Humanities on the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (or unam, as it is commonly known).
unam, “the soul of Mexico”, as it has been called, is much more than just a university in the
traditional sense of the word. It has extended its exemplary work beyond its lecture halls and has
created a far-reaching network of cultural institutions and media to disseminate the values of the
deepest university spirit; that is, the passion for knowledge and the love of teaching in freedom. In
this way, it has contributed decisively in structuring, opening up and modernizing a society which,
without the existence of unam, would undoubtedly be less prosperous and much less dynamic.
But unam has also passed on to Mexican society and to that of many other Latin American
countries reverence for justice, tolerance and democracy, which have pervaded the works of the
best intellectuals, teachers and artists who have passed through its lecture halls and who represent
the elite of Latin American thought.
Just as we are about to hold a new Ibero-American Summit in Estoril devoted to “Innovation
and Knowledge”, we put unam forth as an outstanding example of the great academic capacity and
scientific level of so many Latin American countries.
At the same time, in Spain we shall never be able to forget the enormous generosity unam
extended towards our fellow countrymen and women, who, after the Civil War, were forced to
seek exile in American lands under difficult, bitter conditions. It offered them its lecture halls, its
publications, its research institutes and all kinds of assistance that contributed to enabling these
“exiled, weeping Spaniards” —as one of them called them— to remake their lives with dignity
and contribute, perhaps, more than a mere modicum of prestige and academic brilliance to the
University itself. There will never be occasion enough to proclaim our deepest gratitude, which we
do so once more here today in the presence of its Rector, José Narro.
Nothing would be the same for many human beings without the daily use of the mobile phone
and electronic mail: e-mail. Their respective inventors, the electronic engineers Martin Cooper
and Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, have received the Award for Technical and Scientific Research.
A pioneer and driving force behind wireless communications, Martin Cooper had already
commenced his findings in 1954 with the development of portable radio systems and, two decades
later, was to make the first call from a mobile phone; while Raymond Samuel Tomlinson used
the well-known @ symbol in October 1971 to separate the name of the recipient of the mail from
that of the computer receiving it, thereby making communication between different computers
possible. Thus was born e-mail, a means of communication now as familiar as the mobile phone.
Free-flowing communication is one of the greatest achievements of our day and the mobile
phone and e-mail, in particular, are two of the most significant technological innovations of all
time. As such, the depth of their social impact is yet to be fully known.
The rapid and valuable spread of communication that these two prodigiousmedia have achieved
provides innumerable benefits. Consider how they serve and help in the fields of health, education,
public and business management; how they constitute an opportunity or tool for modernizing
underdeveloped countries. Consider how they bring down barriers between countries and
ideas, how they comprise an ideal medium for spreading culture, how they have disseminated
and democratized information and communication in an extraordinary way, intensifying and
facilitating relations between human beings on a universal scale. For all these reasons, Martin
Cooper and Raymond Samuel Tomlinson take their place in the great annals of world science and
also, from today, in the particular and beautiful history of our Foundation.
The Award for Literature has been bestowed on the Albanian writer Ismaíl Kadaré, one of
the creators who has most intensively lived and suffered a titanic struggle between extremes, the
tension between his literary creation and the social and political problems of his time, especially
of his country, martyrized by a calloused, closed political regime. Dedicated to literary creation
with a passion that these extremely harsh conditions have not mitigated, he has also known how to
masterfully open it up to the world.
