NUMEROUS household names across the globe, including a sizeable number of Brits, have won Prince of Asturias Awards between the first-ever prizegiving in 1981 and 2013 inclusive, or Princess of Asturias Awards from 2014 onwards when the 'Spanish Nobel Prizes' were renamed after King Felipe's daughter, Leonor.

Here are a few of the best-known celebrities – and companies and organisations – who have picked up the Royal prize in Spain in the past 37 years.

Internet, chimps and cancer care

British science award recipients this century include biologist and primatologist Jane Goodall (first picture), a pioneer in the study of chimpanzees; Tim Berners-Lee, the 'father of the World Wide Web'; and oncologist Tony Hunter.

Tennis, golf, cycling, Formula 1 and basketball

Famous Sports Award winners have included the late, great Spanish golfer Severiano Ballesteros, Wimbledon winners Martina Navratilova, Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario and Steffi Graf, British athlete Sebastian Coe, US cyclist Lance Armstrong, Formula 1 drivers Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher, Mallorca-born tennis star Rafa Nadal, and NBA brothers Pau and Marc Gasol.

From black holes to Harry Potter

Concordance Awards have been won by the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (second picture), Harry Potter creator J K Rowling, staff at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and Palestinian political activist and literary theorist Edward Said, the world's number one critic on post-colonial writing and prolifically quoted in literature students' essays.

Activists, politicians, astronauts...

Late South African president and fierce anti-Apartheid activist Nelson Mandela received the International Cooperation Award in 1992, as did Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat in 1994, astronaut-turned-science minister Pedro Duque, Al Gore, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Red Cross, and even Wikipedia.

The Handmaid's Tale and Portnoy's Complaint win prizes

Mario Vargas Llosa (Conversations in the Cathedral, Bad Girl, The Feast of the Goat), Günther Grass (The Tin Drum) Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook), Arthur Miller (The Crucible, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman), Susan Sontag (The Way We Live Now, In America), Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy, The Brooklyn Follies), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale), singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, and Philip Roth (American Pastoral, Portnoy's Complaint) have all won Letters Awards.

Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Plácido Domingo...

The late soprano Montserrat Caballé, tenor Plácido Domingo, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan (fourth picture), flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía, film directors Pedro Almodóvar, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola, British architect Norman Foster, and Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer – who designed São Paulo's MASP art museum and Biennal exhibition hall have won Arts Awards.

Nature and history

Brits who have won the Social Science Award include historian Mary Beard, author Karen Armstrong, and nature documentary presenter David Attenborough.

Yes, even Google

CNN News, the British Council, Italian author Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose), American war correspondant James Nachtwey, the National Geographic Society and Google have all won Communication and Humanities Awards.