WINNING a Nobel Prize might be the highest form of prestige on earth and the ultimate goal of every artist, scientist or public figurehead – but the next best thing has to be earning Spain's national version, a Princess of Asturias Award.
Some of the winners of this year's awards (photo: Princess of Asturias Foundation - Fpa.es)
Chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, novelists Margaret Atwood (most famous for the televised The Handmaid's Tale among her numerous bestsellers) Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy and others) and the latter's wife Siri Hustvedt (What I loved, The Sorrows of an American) have been some of the Royal 'chosen ones' over the years – but only those who have been granted the prestigious prize in the last eight years will have had one with 'Princess' on it.
Until October 2014, the Princess of Asturias Awards did not exist – because there was no such thing as a 'Princess of Asturias'. In Spain, only the immediate heir to the throne holds the title of 'Prince' or 'Princess', with the second, third and subsequent successors being an Infante or Infanta.
The Royal family presents the annual awards - King Felipe VI (centre) did so before his father abdicated, when they were then known as the Prince of Asturias Awards. To his right, Queen Letizia in a splendid satin and lace gown by Carolina Herrera and, end right, the Infanta Sofía, 15. She is named after her paternal grandmother, Queen Sofía (end left). The star of the show - aside from the actual prizewinners - is the Princess of Asturias herself, Leonor (second from left), 17, who has just started the upper sixth at her college in Wales (photo: Gtres)
Prince Felipe of Asturias, only son of King Juan Carlos I, was the first heir to the throne of Spain since the monarchy was overthrown at the beginning of the 20th century and the last King, Alfonso XIII, forced into exile; he presented the Prince of Asturias Awards every autumn from the ages of 13 to 45 inclusive.
But the following summer, Juan Carlos I abdicated, his son became King Felipe VI, and as he had no sons, the immediate successor to the Crown was the eldest of his two daughters – then aged just eight years old.
Winners of the eight categories of Spain's national answer to the Nobel Prizes are decided throughout the year, but trophies are presented in a public ceremony every autumn (photo: Fpa.es)
Princess Leonor presented the first awards in her own name a few days before her 14th birthday, which was Hallowe'en 2019 – and it was also the young Royal's first-ever speech in public in an official capacity that she had penned herself.
Big responsibility: Princess Leonor (right) became direct heir to the throne at just eight years old, and she and her younger sister, the Infanta Sofía (left) have been preparing for their future Royal duties almost since birth. The sisters, who are very close - and found it hard being apart for the first time when Leonor went to college abroad last year - are pictured here arriving at the awards venue (photo: Gtres)
The brave teen would since find these daunting occasions to be part of her regular routine – and, now in her second and final year at sixth-form college in Wales, Leonor led the 2022 ceremony with days to go before her 17th birthday and a fresh confidence acquired through gradual exposure to official engagements and many months as a boarder and student in a different country, different language, and living in halls with girls of completely different cultures, nationalities and backgrounds.
Here are this year's well-deserved winners, who they are, what they do, and the reasons for their going down in history.
International Cooperation: Dame Ellen MacArthur
A Derbyshire-born sailing fanatic who saved up her school dinner money to buy her first yacht at 17, Dame Ellen's autobiography Taking on the World – published when she was barely 26 - became a bestseller overnight. Fans on every continent were fascinated to read about how the determined youngster became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe single-handedly before having even lived for a quarter of a century.
Dame Ellen MacArthur earlier this year (photo by Spain's national radio and television broadcasting company, RTVE)
Ellen was not yet 25 when, in 2001, she came second in the Vendée Globe round-the-world yacht race in the Kingfisher in 94 days, four hours and 25 minutes – having already become the fastest lone woman to cover the east-to-west passage from Plymouth, UK, to Newport, Rhode Island, USA a month before her 24th birthday in 14 days, 23 hours and 11 minutes.
This is a record she still holds to this day, now aged 46 – her Vendée Globe record remained unbroken for the next 20 years – and she set another in 2005 when she completed a single-handed non-stop voyage around the world in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds in her trimaran, the B&Q/Castorama, sleeping in 'shifts' of just 20 minutes at a time for two-and-a-half months.
The B&Q/Castorama yacht Ellen used for her record-breaking 71-day round-the-world voyage in 2005 (photo: Ellen MacArthur Foundation)
Now living with her long-term partner Ian McKay and having retired from professional sailing 12 years ago, Dame Ellen's Princess of Asturias Award is not for her watersports feats, but for the charities she launched off the back of what started as a serious hobby as a teenager.
The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust was set up in 2003 to provide sailing lessons and experience for young people with or recovering from the disease, aged eight to 24, 'to help them regain their confidence'.
Five years later, Dame MacArthur and other high-profile sportspeople raised £4 million (about €4.42m at today's rates) for the Rainbow Children's Hospice to fund tailor-designed family living quarters for terminally-ill young people.
Dame Ellen during a live documentary earlier this year (photo: EFE Verde)
The following year, she set up the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), to promote the circular economy – reusing and recycling waste material as much as possible to protect the environment – and the EMF's 2017 report on sustainable textile manufacturing became the seed for designer Stella McCartney's 2018 campaign, Make Fashion Circular
Ellen's eponymous foundation has become far-reaching, with the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) – a Prince of Asturias Award winner in 1988 for Concordance – the World Economic Forum and the United Nations becoming involved.
She was named a Dame of the British Empire in the 2005 New Year's Honours' List.
Sports: Olympic Refugee Foundation and Refugee Olympic Team
According to the Foundation – set up by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2017 – as many as 82.4 million people on earth are, at any time, displaced or stateless due to conflict, political unrest, natural disaster, or the risk of persecution or torture in their countries of origin.
The Tokyo 2020 Refugee Olympic Team, or EOR (photo: :UNHCR)
“The Foundation believes in a society where everyone belongs, through sport,” is its mission, and it has so far backed 12 programmes in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Jordan, Kenya, México, Rwanda, Turkey and Ugandia, with new schemes due for launch soon in Colombia and France.
'Safe access to sport' for at least one million displaced young people is the Foundation's goal for 2024, and it currently provides this for around 200,000.
The team itself was created in 2015 by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR – a Prince of Asturias Cooperation Award winner in 1991), and its Games début was the following year in Rio de Janeiro, with 10 competitors, each one 'hosted' by a national Olympic Committee from a different country.
South Sudan citizens in athletics, 'hosted' by Kenya, were James Chiengjiek, Yiech Biel, Paulo Lokoro, Rose Lokonyen and Anjelina Lohalith; the DRC's Yolande Mabika and Popole Misenga competed in judo, 'hosted' by Brazil; Rami Anis and Yusra Mardini, from Syria, 'hosted' by Belgium and Germany respectively, took part in swimming, and Ethiopia athlete Yonas Kinde was 'hosted' by Luxembourg.
One of the EOR's Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 competitors, Anjelina Lohalith, from South Sudan (photo: Worldathletics.org)
In Rio 2016, the team was known by its English-language acronym of ROT, but this was changed to French for Tokyo 2020, to Équipe Olympique des Réfugiés (EOR).
This time, 28 took part, six of whom – Paulo, James, Rose, Anjelina, Popole and Yusra – had competed in Rio 2016.
As well as swimming, athletics and judo, they also represented the EOR in badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, karate, shooting, weightlifting, taekwondo and wrestling, and came from South Sudan, Syria, the DRC, the Congo, Sudan, Eritrea, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Iraq.
They were among 836 sportspeople who received Olympic scholarships to cover their costs, largely due to being from disadvantaged backgrounds or very poor countries.
Although the EOR team has not yet taken home any medals or diplomas from their two Games, Olympic scholarship competitors netted seven gold, four silver and five bronze medals, plus 31 diplomas, from Tokyo 2020.
Letters: Juan Mayorga
This Madrid-born playwright, now aged 57, has been translated into over 30 languages, meaning it's likely his works will have been performed at a theatre near you at some point – and they are popular worldwide, given that Mayorga's numerous plays have been compared with huge global household names such as Harold Pinter, David Hare and Tom Stoppard.
Playwright Juan Mayorga in a recent photo by the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española, or RAE)
In fact, Mayorga has spent some time in the Anglophone world – he took courses at the Royal Court Theatre International Summer School in London – as well as living and studying in Münster and Berlin (Germany) and Paris (France).
Juan Mayorga's first-ever play was Seven Good Men (Siete Hombres Buenos), in 1989, which was an instant award-winner, and eight years later, he gained a PhD in philosophy with a thesis on the thinking of Walter Benjamin.
In addition to having been drama and philosophy professor at numerous prestigious institutions – including Madrid's Royal High School of Dramatic Arts and at the National Research Council's (CSIC's) Philosophy Institute – Mayorga's prolific plays have been published at a rate of almost one per year since 1990.
Juan Mayorga's play El Jardín Quemado ('The Burnt Garden') being performed (photo: Masscultura.com)
The Bloomberg Translator (El Traductor de Blumberg), The Geneva Dream (El Sueño de Ginebra), Love Letters to Stalin (Cartas de Amor a Stalin), The Burnt Garden (El Jardín Quemado), The Woman of My Life (La Mujer de mi Vida), and The Fat and the Thin (El Gordo y El Flaco) came out within the 12 years that followed Siete Hombres Buenos.
Collaborations with playwright Andrés Lima and the Animalario Theatre Company include Alexanda and Anna. What Spain Couldn't See at the President's Daughter's Wedding Reception (Alejandro y Ana. Lo Que España No Pudo Ver del Banquete de la Boda de la Hija del Presidente), from 2002, Snowflake's Last Words (Últimas Palabras de Copito de Nieve), from 2004, and Hamelin from 2005.
Stage performance of Juan Mayorga's El Mago ('The Wizard') in 2018 (photo by the National Drama Centre, part of the Ministry of Culture)
Mayorga then went on to write The Boy at the End of the Line (El Chico de la Última Fila), Endless Peace (La Paz Perpetua), The Mapmaker (El Cartógrafo), Reykjavík (Reikjavik), The Golem (El Golem), The Wizard (El Mago), and Intensely Blue (Intensamente Azules) before the beginning of the 2020s.
This decade, he has penned Shock 1: The Condor and the Puma and Shock 2: The Storm and the War (La Tormenta y la Guerra), based upon The Shock Doctrine by Canadian author Naomi Klein,and this year, Silence (Silencio).
Social Sciences: Eduardo Matos Moctezuma
Coming up to his 82nd birthday, this Mexican-born archaeologist and anthropologist is a world leader in pre-colonial Hispanic society and history, acknowledged to be one of the greatest experts in his field – and greatest promoters of the subject, too.
World-renowed Mexican archaeologist, anthropologist and pre-Hispanic society expert Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (photo by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, Fpa.es)
Moctezuma has carried out extensive field work in archaeological digs in Comalcalco, Tepeapulco, Bonampak, Teotihuacán, Cholul, Tula, Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlán, among others.
His discoveries include the famous Sun Pyramid, which he dug up in Teotihuacán – where he also opened the Culture Museum and the Local History Research Centre – and the Great Temple in Tenochtitlán.
Moctezuma has written at least a dozen books in various volumes on archaeology and human society in pre-Hispanic México, covering the Aztecs, mythology, and the colonisation.
The Aztec monument known as the Pyramid of the Sun, or Pirámide del Sol, in Teotihuacán, México, was discovered by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and is now a global tourist attraction (photo: Jochen Hertweck on Flickr)
Global exhibitions he has hosted and designed have included Aztecs, at the London Royal Academy of Arts, Isis and Quetzalcóatl at the Monterrey Cultural Forum, and Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco: 500 Years Since Their Fall at the Great Temple Museum.
In 2017, Harvard University founded its Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Faculty for students in archaeology, Hispanic studies and anthropology.
Concordance: Shigeru Ban
An architect from Tokyo who thought he was going to be a carpenter by trade, Shigeru, 65, who studied in New York, Paris, Harvard and Cornell, is known for being able to whip up shelters and temporary housing in record time for victims of natural disasters and other catastrophes.
Shigeru Ban at the Princess of Asturias Foundation headquarters (photo: Fpa.es)
His emergency accommodation building, involving unconventional and reusable material, is not merely a roof and walls to keep the elements out: Their design is pleasing to the eye and allows for privacy and comfort, contributing to improving their occupants' emotional wellbeing at a time when they may have lost everything.
A pioneer in the 1980s in environmental and sustainability concerns, and working closely with global charities, governments and affected communities, Shigeru's creations have become a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people made homeless through hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and similar disasters.
He was named advisor to the UNHCR in 1995, and founded the Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) as a source of immediate response to emergency housing needs.
Shigeru Ban showing slides of his creations (photo: Fpa.es)
Plastic, wood, textile fabric, paper and cardboard are all used in setting up temporary accommodation – especially waste material – with the focus on comfort, dignity and durability.
He achieves the latter using polyurethane pipes, turning them into a solid, robust frame for his properties at minimum cost.
Prototypes of his fast-track houses have even included cardboard tubes.
They were first used in 1994 for housing refugees in Rwanda following the genocide, and in Kobe, Japan the very next year after the earthquake; since then, they have been used for displaced Ukrainians queuing at the Polish border.
Shigeru is currently researching steel and carbon fibre as possible building materials for 'instant homes', given that they are light in weight, strong, long-lasting, and easy to transport, store and set up.
Science and Technology: Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio and Demis Hassabis
'Deep Learning', according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is 'a subset of machine learning which is essentially a neural network with three or more layers...[that] attempt to simulate the behaviour of the human brain' – a form of Artificial Intelligence that imitates the way the brain acquires knowledge.
Deep Learning, illustrated in a diagram by electricity board Iberdrola
Voice recognition, sight, and natural language processing or object perception as achieved by the nervous system is created artificially using computer technology that copies the biological process, by repeating the mathematical sequences and algorithms this follows.
Driverless cars, face recognition, voice recognition, applications such as Siri and Alexa are all examples of Deep Learning.
Geoffrey Hinton, from London, an Experimental Psychology graduate from Cambridge coming up to his 75th birthday, Yann LeCun, 62, from Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France, an electrotechnical and electronics engineering graduate, and his compatriot Yoshua Bengio, 58, from Paris, an IT engineering graduate from Canada's McGill University, are considered the 'fathers' of Deep Learning, and are credited with some of the most advanced recent progress in the field.
Left to right: Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Demis Hassabis (photo: Fpa.es)
Cambridge computer sciences graduate Demis Hassabis, 46, from London, an acclaimed international chess-player from age 13, founded the Artificial Intelligence company DeepMind Technologies in 2011, where he started designing algorithms to be able to win video games, such as AlphaGo – which led him to beating Go world champion Lee Sedol – AlphaZero, a revolutionary AI learning system combining the human neuronal system with connections between memory and imagination and with machine learning, and AlphaFold, which transforms the study of 3D protein structures.
Hassabis has remained CEO of DeepMind since Google bought the company in 2014.
He was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire), and his extensive list of awards and decorations include the Golden Plate of the Academy of Achievement, from the UK, in 2017.
Arts: Carmen Linares and María Pagés
Carmen Pacheco Rodríguez, 71, from Linares (Jaén province) and María Jesús Pagés Madrigal, 59, from Sevilla – better known as Carmen Linares and María Pagés – are two of the biggest household names in flamenco of the last two generations, and have managed to adapt their performing art to keep up with the times yet without losing any of its raw, traditional essence.
Left, María Pagés, and right, Carmen Linares - a powerful duo on stage and flamenco ‘dream team’ (this picture and the next two from Fpa.es)
Never designed to be for show, flamenco is a form of folk expression that began among the earliest gypsy communities in southern Spain, through which melodies, guitar notes, and lyrics invented on the spur of the moment became a form of domestic conversation and a 'language', verbal and visual as well as aural, that linked entire clans.
Since Spain's earliest days as a global holiday destination, flamenco would eventually become commercialised, and nowadays is – erroneously – associated with polka-dot dresses, hand-clapping, castañets and extravagant, flamboyant stage shows and street parades.
Carmen and María have subtly adapted their style to the modern world, turning flamenco into a universal art form, whilst keeping a strong hold on its roots and ancient intentions.
María was prima ballerina at the Rafael Aguilar Spanish Ballet and María Rosa Spanish Ballet companies, among others, as a child and teenager, before forming her own aged 27, producing, choreographing, directing and starring in numerous productions over the past few decades.
She has performed at international festivals and stage venues including New York's Radio City Music Hall, Paris' Théatre Chaillôt, Rome's Auditorio Parco della Musica, Verona's Roman Theatre, Baden-Baden's Festspielhaus in Germany, the Peking National Centre for Performing Arts, Tokyo International Forum, New York's Fall for Dance Festival, Moscow's Chekov Festival, and the Sevilla Flamenco Bienal.
Carmen, described as one of the 'biggest voices in flamenco singing', started out in Madrid-based flamenco bars or tablaos, alongside famous names such as Enrique Morente, Camarón and La Niña de los Peines.
She was the first-ever flamenco singer to perform at New York's Lincoln Centre as a guest of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and has since been a sell-out at world-renowned venues including Sydney Opera House, London's Barbican Centre, Buenos Aires' Colón Theatre, the Théatre Chaillôt in Paris, Barcelona's Palau de la Música, and Madrid's Theatre Royal.
Carmen's numerous albums include the 1993 compilation Canciones Populares Antiguas ('Popular Ancient Songs'), where she put some of the poetry of the world-famous early-20th century literary icon Federico García Lorca to music.
Both women have a lengthy list of prizes and distinctions to their names – in Carmen's case, this includes the Master of Mediterranean Music Award from the USA's Berklee College of Music, and in María's, the Leónide Massine Prize in Italy.
Communication and Humanities: Adam Michnik
Just turned 76 a few days ahead of the awards ceremony, Adam Michnik was forced out of his native Poland aged just 22 as a punishment for his human rights activism, which saw him imprisoned numerous times by the Communist régime that governed the central-European nation during the decades it sat behind the Iron Curtain.
Warsaw-born human rights activist, journalist and politician Adam Michnik, at the Princess of Asturias Awards Foundation headquarters (photo: Fpa.es)
In fact, to be able to study his history degree via the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, he had to do so via distance learning, as he would have faced arrest if he had set foot back in the country.
One of the most famous human rights campaigners in Poland, Michnik is widely held to have played a key rôle in returning democracy to the nation, and was a co-founder of the KOR Movement, or committee for workers' protection.
A journalist, Adam Michnik was editor for a number of independent magazines and on the management team for one of the Polish opposition's most prominent publishers, the Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza.
Michnik, during what is considered to be the 'revolutionary year', 1989 – when the Berlin Wall finally came down and the Iron Curtain abolished – became an MP and founded the independent newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, now one of the most widely-read in central Europe and of which he is still editor today.
Always a strong defender of dialogue over divisions when it comes to cultural, racial, ideological, societal and ethnic diversity, Michnik was a firm believer in the benefits to his country of joining the European Union, which it finally did in 2004.
Adam Michnik admiring his commemorative pavement plaque (photo: Fpa.es)
In fact, he even upheld Spain's presidential residence, the Moncloa Palace, as an example of national reconciliation, which he advocated strongly for.
Overall, Michnik spent six years of his life in varying stints in Communist prisons, the last of these ending in 1986.
As well as interviewing high-profile figureheads in national newspapers such as Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País, Liberation, and The Washington Post – plus the New York Review of Books – and lifetime member of the Reporters Without Borders council, expert in Russian politics and frequent commentator on the recent Ukraine invasion, Michnik has had at least four books on history, essays and politics published.
They include Letters from Prison and Other Essays, The Church and the Left, Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives, and In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe, the latter of which was released in 2011.