The International Journalism Awards of EL MUNDO celebrate their 21st edition with the defense of freedom of expression and ethical commitment as their motto, and this year they award their award to two exiled journalists who, from different parts of the globe, represent the fundamental values of the profession: courage and rigor.

In the Best Journalistic Work category, the winner was Carlos Dada, director of El Faro, which has been publishing crimes and political corruption after the drug war for 24 years. Victim of death threats and intimidation by the government of Nayib Bukele, as well as spied on by the Pegasus software, he has had to move with his newspaper to Costa Rica, where he continues his courageous work as an investigative journalist. And in the Freedom of the Press category, the winner was Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran, one of the most influential columnists for the opposition to Erdogan's government. His books deal with controversial issues in his Turkey, from which he had to flee. She lives in exile in Germany.

After the relevant deliberations, the jury has taken the decision to award them this morning and the awards will be presented next November. The members were Joaquín Manso, director of EL MUNDO and president of the jury; Silvia Román, deputy director of International of EL MUNDO; José Ignacio Torreblanca, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations; Ana Palacio, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and analyst of EL MUNDO, Felipe Sahagún, professor of International Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid; Andrea Nicastro, correspondent for Corriere della Sera; Sandrine Morel, correspondent for Le Monde in Spain and Sam Jones, correspondent for The Guardian in Spain. As secretary, Victor de la Serna was present.

The prize, endowed with 20,000 euros and a commemorative sculpture by the artist Martín Chirino, is celebrated in memory of Julio A. Parrado, victim of the Iraq war, Julio Fuentes, murdered in Afghanistan, and José Luis López de Lacalle, columnist of EL MUNDO murdered by ETA, and recognize the rigor, journalistic value, ethical commitment and defense of freedom of expression that characterized the aforementioned journalists.

Last year, after a break in 2020 due to the pandemic, the winners were the Russian journalist Alexey Andreevich Kovalev, head of research of the Meduza news project, based in Riga (Latvia), and Luz Escobar, a reporter for the digital media 14ymedio and currently under home confinement in her country.

Carlos Dada and Ece Temelkuran join a long list of journalism professionals who, over the last two decades, have celebrated with EL MUNDO the importance of the profession. In 2019, the work of the former editor of The Washington Post, Martin Baron, and the editor of The Times, John Witherow, were recognized.

In recent editions these international awards have also been given to important names in the national and international journalistic profession such as Thomas L. Friedman, Lydia Cacho, Anabel Hernández, Mark Thompson, Klaus Brinkbäumer, Manu Brabo, Santi Palacios, Salud Hernández-Mora, Rosa Montero, Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Javier Espinosa. Raúl Rivero, who died in 2021, was also one of the winners in the 2003 edition. Rivero was imprisoned in Cuba and, subsequently, became a regular contributor and columnist in this newspaper.

The director of EL MUNDO, Joaquín Manso, has highlighted the value of both winners as "two examples of courage in defense of free information as a citizen tool against authoritarian governments." "Both names are a good example of EL MUNDO's commitment to freedom of information and journalism as one of the human rights, especially persecuted in conflict zones," he said.

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