I was 13 years old. He was a spiky and friendly teenager who highlighted intelligence and a sense of humor. It awakened the hopes of all Spaniards. He was the son of Don Juan Carlos, the grandson of Don Juan. Being a baby I had him in arms at Villa Giralda during a fleeting visit because Mrs. María asked me to. Four or five year old boy, we played with him, his grandfather and I in the garden of that house that sheltered Don Juan's long exile against Franco's dictatorship.

And there was Don Felipe, on the stage of the Campoamor theater, in front of a crowded room, giving his first speech during the ceremony of the Prince of Asturias Awards. People applauded him in a thunderous way because the teenager was safe and calm. A few years later, when he studied at the Academy of Zaragoza, his father asked me to do the first political interview. We had lunch together and talked several hours. The interview opened the Sunday of the true ABC and many years later, on January 28, 2018, when Don Felipe turned 50, it was reproduced by the newspaper La Razón , which underlined what the Prince had said: " There is no sacrifice that does not be willing to do for Spain . " And he has exemplarily fulfilled the duty contracted with the Spanish people. José Hierro, who won the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 1981, told me at the end of the act since his republicanism: "Good for Felipe. The future of Spain is assured." Later, the great poet stood above good and evil, above prizes, distinctions and awards, unaffected before crossing the dark gloom of the beyond. "What does it matter if nothing was nothing if nothing else will be after all, after all so much for nothing."

The reader of EL MUNDO will understand the emotion with which I am going to attend today the intervention of Doña Leonor, Princess of Asturias, at the Campoamor theater. The great-granddaughter of Don Juan, holy God! How much history accumulated in the fatigue of my eyes. In three modalities of the Prize, although usually in the one of the Letters, I have participated every year in the Juries of the Prince of Asturias. They assure me that I am the only one who has always done it. With presidents of the Foundation of such prestige as Pedro Masaveu, Plácido Arango, José Ramón Álvarez-Rendueles, Matías Rodríguez Inciarte, Luis Fernández-Vega ... the success of the Awards is due in part to the lucidity and tenacity of Graciano Garcia who knew how to internationalize them. The New York Times established them as the most prominent Awards in the world after the Nobel Prizes; and the Financial Times considered them as the flagship of universal culture. Graciano García, a great journalist, an excellent poet, a writer in love with freedom, will be satisfied today with the relief achieved by the Awards. UNESCO recognized the contribution of the Prince of Asturias Awards to the cultural heritage of Humanity, underlining "the extraordinary work developed by the Foundation", as well as "the eminent role played by the Awards in the promotion and support of scientific, cultural values and humanistic that form the common heritage of Humanity. "

Doris Lessing, Günter Grass, Camilo José Cela, Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa were Prince of Asturias Awards, before being Nobel Prizes for Literature. With all of them I had the opportunity to talk in Oviedo and also with Juan Rulfo, Francisco Nieva, Carlos Fuentes, Paul Auster, Amos Oz, Margaret Atwood, Isamil Kadaré, Susan Sontag, Caro Baroja, Raymond Carr, Philip Roth ... I remember both conversations, exciting for me, with Stephen Hawking, who strengthened with his name the Patarrollo, Fuster, Grisolía, Peter Higgs and many other international scientists. The names extolled by the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts overwhelm: Oscar Niemeyer, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Bob Dylan, Pedro Almodóvar, Roberto Matta, Victoria de los Angeles, Norman Foster, Nuria Espert, Coppola, Tapies, Chillida, Scorsese ... I witnessed, by the way, the meeting between Woody Allen and Arthur Miller in the lobby of the Reconquista hotel. Of parallel professions, living both in New York, they did not know each other. The Prince of Asturias Prize brought them together in Oviedo. "Yes, it's me," the filmmaker smiled at the playwright. A separate chapter for Plácido Domingo, the first name in the history of Spanish music, which was the Prince of Asturias Award, shortly after the ABC I directed proclaimed him "The Spanish of the Year". Unforgettable also the meeting on the stage of the Campoamor by Isaac Rabin and Yasser Arafat. And conversations with Nelson Mandela and with Mikhail Gorbachev or with Helmut Kohl.

Throughout my long professional life, only the election in 1996 as an academic of the Royal Spanish Academy has meant more to me than the concession in 1991 to my humble person of the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The reader can already imagine the satisfaction that my name produces, so undeservedly, on the list of the Prince of Asturias Awards for Communication and Humanities with Kapuscinski, Enzesberger, Steiner, Umberto Eco, Vaclav Havel, Indro Montanelli , Octavio Paz (for Vuelta), María Zambrano, Emilio Lledó, teachers who received the award.

The Foundation was right not to put aside sport , a manifestation of the first order in popular culture. Rafael Nadal, the first Spanish athlete of all time, won the Prince of Asturias Award for Sport with Bubka, Induráin, Lewis, Casillas, Ballesteros, Steffi Graf, Arancha Sánchez Vicario, Los Gasol, Martina Navratilova ... and Fernando Alonso , which reminded us of the phrase of the Marinetti Futurism Manifesto in 1909: "Know that the splendor of the world has been enriched with a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A roaring car, which seems to run on shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Niké of Samothrace. We will sing to the large crowds agitated by work, the nightly vibration of the arsenals under their violent electric moons. "

It would be unfair not to recognize that Teresa Sanjurjo has managed to prolong the success of Graciano García. And that has also strengthened, with its own personality, the prestige of the awards. His prudent, effective, tireless, intelligent work deserves the general applause.

The Crown, in short, has benefited from the success and prestige of the Princess of Asturias Awards. The expectation of listening to Princess Leonor has exceeded all limits. Her mother, Queen Doña Letizia, has taught her daughter to behave simply and spontaneously, and I am sure she will also speak in public. I attended the event at the Palace when the King imposed the Golden Fleece. The girl acted simply and won everyone's sympathy . The spectators who will cram the Campoamor theater today will dedicate to Queen Doña Sofía, as every year, the biggest ovation of the act. They will then remain on the word of this teenager who is the daughter of Felipe VI, the granddaughter of Juan Carlos I, the great-granddaughter of Juan III, the descendant, from parents to children, of Carlos III, of Felipe II, of Carlos I and of the Catholic Monarchs. Princess Leonor is waiting for a life of hard experiences, "that reigning is a task," Quevedo wrote; "that scepters ask for more sweat than plows, and sweat dyed from veins; that the Crown is the annoying weight that wears shoulders of the soul first than the forces of the body; that the palaces for the idle prince are sepulchers of a dead life, and for the one who attends they are the papules of a living death; this is stated by the glorious memories of those enlightened princes who did not stain their memories, counting between his crowned age some time without work ".

Luis María Anson , of the Royal Spanish Academy.

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