Queen Letizia presents literature awards

Queen Letizia of Spain has presented the SM Children’s and Young Adult Literature Awards “El Barco de Vapor” and “Gran Angular.”

The awards were held at the Royal Post Office in Madrid and were organised by the SM Foundation.

Upon arrival, the Queen was greeted by the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, Milagros Tolón; and the President of the SM Group, José Manuel Cidad. Inside, she was also greeted by the Secretary of State for Youth and Childhood, Rubén Pérez Correa; the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Local Administration of the Community of Madrid, Miguel Ángel García; the Minister of Digitalization, Miguel López-Valverde; the Minister of Education, Science and Universities, Mercedes Zarzalejo; the Minister of Health, Fátima Matute; the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sports, Mariano de Paco; the Undersecretary of Culture, Carmen Páez; the Vice President of the SM Group, Lander Gaztelumendi; and the Director of the SM Foundation, Mayte Ortiz.

The event was hosted by writer Teresa Viejo. Speeches were held by the president of the Community of Madrid and the president of the SM Group, before Queen Letizia presented the awards to Alba Quintas and Josan Hatero, respectively. They received the awards for the works “The Fourth Life of Blanca Cuervo” and “The Memory of Bicycles.”

In a speech, the Queen said, “Now that Studio Ghibli has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, I’m bringing up one of its films. It’s called ‘Whisper of the Heart.’ I’m doing so because its protagonist is a teenager who discovers love in the book cards of a library. It’s a film from over 30 years ago. Not a trace of artificial intelligence. Not a trace, wonderfully, of social media. In ‘Whisper of the Heart,’ life is depicted on the book loan cards of a library.

“This teenager reads a lot and feels a lot. It confirms the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature Han Kang’s assertion that not reading limits what we feel. But this is further reinforced by one of our authors, Josan Hatero, in an article he just wrote for the literary magazine Zenda, in which he quotes a professor from York University in Canada. He says: by reading, we improve our ability and capacity to understand other people.

“But I don’t know what I’m doing proclaiming the virtues of reading before you, who are all convinced readers, when what we’re talking about today is what children and young people read, who are the ones who have to build the architecture of a gaze, which is what María José Solano says reading is.

“That’s why children and young people who read these books by Alba Quintas and Josan Hatero will form their own opinions. I like to think that many girls, and perhaps some boys too, when they read Alba Quintas’s book, will think twice before venturing into, investigating, and delving into certain places or networks.”