One more year, with the comforting regularity of seasonal cycles, the Campoamor theater hosts the Princess of Asturias awards ceremony, with its variety of disciplines and approaches that provide a plural vision of culture, science and contemporary society
Three winners’ speeches follow one another. The Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge, Sports Award winner, legendary runner and great communicator of the benefits of physical activity, speaks first. “Running is much more than a physical movement, it is a vehicle that has the power to unite, allowing different cultures and trajectories to meet,” he says.
Luis Pizarro, executive director of the Medicines for Neglected Diseases Initiative, winner of the International Cooperation Award, goes on to denounce that “there are millions of sick men and women, neglected, forgotten, invisible, affected by often fatal diseases for which there are no medicines.” But he adds that “working closely with partners around the world we have managed to develop 12 new treatments. It is no exaggeration to say it: together we have saved millions of lives!”
After the presentation of the diplomas by the Princess of Asturias, Meryl Streep, Arts Prize winner and true star of this year’s competition, takes the floor. She starts off theatrically, appearing humorously overwhelmed by a confusion with her roles. And he makes a passionate vindication of interpretive work: “What do actors really do? The actor’s intangible gift of metamorphosis is what makes it difficult to quantify or measure. How important is he to us? What value?”, he asks himself. And he responds: “Empathy is the beating heart of the actor’s gift. It is the current that connects us with the fictional character. I can make his heart race, or calm him down, as a scene requires.”
After citing “two great Spanish artists, Pablo Picasso and Penélope Cruz,” he recalled that at university he had designed the costumes for a production of The House of Bernarda Alba “Lorca wrote the passionate cry of Martirio two months before his own murder. To act in a play like this is to lend the dead a voice that the living can hear.” “In this increasingly hostile and volatile world, I hope we can spread our other rule, which is taught to all actors: the important thing is to listen,” concludes the interpreter.
The Italian philologist Nuccio Ordine, who died in July, was especially excited about his Communication and Humanities award as he considered it a cherry on top of his career, as explained by Maria Ordine and Rosalia Broccolo, the author’s sister and partner. At the ceremony, a draft of what was going to be his speech is distributed, where he remembers “three distinguished masters of European culture, as well as great friends of mine” who preceded him in the award: Umberto Eco, Emilio Lledó and George Steiner. “Three illustrious scholars, but above all great teachers.” “In a society in which our young people are told that they must study to learn a trade and earn money, where contempt for knowledge is fueled by the dangerous belief that only money guarantees human dignity, the function of a authentic teaching takes on an even more essential role,” he wrote.
Emmanuel Carrére, awarded in 2021 with the award for Literature, collects his mother’s award for Social Sciences. The Slavist Hèléne Carrére d’Encausse also died, in August, after the jury’s decision was announced.
Haruki Murakami, winner of Literature, has not spoken on stage. “He is very shy and he didn’t want to,” Juan Cerezo, director of Tusquets, which publishes his work, tells me. The Japanese creator put conditions on his presence in Oviedo: no press conferences or giving statements, images or recordings to Japanese media without authorization from his agency.
He did appear on Wednesday at the Jovellanos theater in Gijón, before a thousand members of 92 reading clubs, and on Thursday at the IES Carreño Miranda in Avilés, before 600 schoolchildren. “The minds of older people retain the youthful part.” “Our conscience is a house, it has a ground floor and basements and we writers have to reach the second basement.” “I have my own style, Murakamism,” were some of his most celebrated phrases.
Other winners this year have been Jeffrey Gordon, Everett Peter Greenberg and Bonnie Lynn Bassler, in Scientific and Technical Research, and the NGO Mary’s Meals, Concord Award.