Spanish royalty attends the Asturias awards ceremony in Oviedo

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia attended the grand presentation ceremony of the Prince of Asturias Awards. He majesty Queen Sofia watched the ceremony from the Royal Box as the eight recipients of this years prizes received their awards from the King. First was the cartoonist and creator of Malfada, Quino. The Argentinian’s character has won a universal following for her intelligent, non-conformist, rebellious and sensitive observations of the world. This year’s Laureate for literature, Irish writer, John Banville was one of the speakers. He made his case for the sentence to rank among the great inventions of the world. “Humankind’s most momentous invention is the sentence. There have been great civilisations that did not have the concept of the wheel, but they have had the sentence, for without it they would have been neither great nor civilised. It is with the sentence that we think, speculate, calculate, imagine. It is with the sentence that we declare love, declare war, declare oaths…it is with the sentence that we declare self,” he told the audience. Each winner receives 50,000 euros and a sculpture by Joan Miro, as with American John Gehry who was awarded the Arts prize for his work as an architect with unusual materials like titanium which he used in the design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The presentation of the awards, recognised as second only to the Nobel Prizes came to a close with Caddy Adbuza taking the applause of the audience for her work for peace recognised with the Asturias Prize for Concord. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo she has been a tireless activist especially for those children and women caught in conflict zones.