Photo: The Spanish Royal House
An award for Svalbard: Leonor urges young people to hold on to hope
Crown Princess Leonor presented the Princess of Asturias Awards in Oviedo, where the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was among the winners. In her speech she spoke for young people struggling to find hope in turbulent times.
King Felipe, Queen Letizia, Crown Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía presented the Princess of Asturias Awards at the Campoamor Theatre in Oviedo on Friday. Queen Sofía also attended. The awards, which bear Leonor's title, are given every year to people and organisations who have made an outstanding contribution in fields such as culture, science, sport and cooperation.
For the first time Leonor opened the ceremony herself. She presented all eight awards and then gave a speech.
An award for the Svalbard seed vault
This year's laureates include a clear Norwegian connection. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault received the award for International Cooperation. In the vault, carved into the mountain near Longyearbyen, seeds from almost every country are stored as a backup of the world's food crops.
The other laureates were the animation studio Studio Ghibli, author Julian Barnes, historian Timothy Garton Ash, musician Patti Smith, footballer Leo Messi, astronaut Christina Koch and scientists David Klenerman, Shankar Balasubramanian and Pascal Mayer.
"We young people ask questions"
In her speech Leonor spoke on behalf of her own generation. She asked how young people can keep their enthusiasm at a time of inequality, conflict, extremism, uncertainty, a high cost of living and a society where many cannot imagine getting a good job or a home of their own.
She quoted the Czech president Václav Havel: "Hope is not the conviction that things will turn out well, but the certainty that some things make sense and are worth defending, whatever happens."
She also highlighted astronaut Christina Koch, who has seen the Earth from 400,000 kilometres away. From there you see that we all share the same planet, Leonor said: "We share everything, and we have no choice but to understand one another. We are smaller than we believe and less important than we think."
She ended with a line from the French poet Paul Valéry, which Studio Ghibli's founder Hayao Miyazaki used in one of his films: "The wind is rising. We must try to live!"
