The historian Joaquim Nadal, a man of letters and now reconverted by politics into the new Councilor for Research and Universities, has already taken the tone very quickly in his new occupation and yesterday he proclaimed to the four winds that “without science we go nowhere” . I couldn’t have chosen a better day to say it, at the awarding of the 12th edition of Vanguardia de la Ciència, organized by this newspaper and the Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation. We should all be very satisfied with the level of research excellence in Catalonia and, as Nadal said, we must ensure that this image of scientific power that it has internationally “is also perceptible and tangible” among the Catalan citizenship itself.
If there are things that are going well, it is worth highlighting them and giving them their due value. This is what we humbly try to do at La Vanguardia and that is why it is so important to be able to annually organize these awards that highlight the work of young researchers. For the past two years, we have been doing positive discrimination and the awards that are discussed by the jury have a special requirement that they be led by women, either as first author or as principal researcher. The reason is to overcome the existing inequality in this sector, in which the majority of researchers are men. Future generations must be encouraged not to think that this job is not for them. For this reason, among all the candidates, Neus MartÃnez and Pilar Navarro were awarded the first prize; Inés MarÃn with the second, and Cátia Monteiro with the third. All of them with cancer-related work that they explained with overflowing passion.
Nadal also congratulated himself on the initiative of our newspaper to disclose the scientific activity and that it is not covered by other information that may be more attractive but much less important. In recent years, Catalonia has become a point of reference in advances against cancer and can boast of having the only laboratory, Hipra, that has obtained a vaccine against covid in Europe, among many other achievements. All these are realities and the result of good public-private collaboration. It is time, then, to congratulate us.
