Princess of Asturias Foundation

The Princess of Asturias Foundation is a non-profit private institution whose essential aims are to contribute to extolling and promoting those scientific, cultural and humanistic values that form part of the universal heritage of humanity and consolidate the existing links between the Principality of Asturias and the title traditionally held by the heirs to the Crown of Spain.

HM King Felipe VI has been the Honorary President of the Foundation since its creation in 1980. Following his proclamation as King of Spain on 19th June 2014, HRH Leonor de Borbón y Ortiz, Princess of Asturias, is now the Honorary President of this institution which annually convenes the Princess of Asturias Awards.

Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose work in cinematography, theatre, dance, music, photography, painting, sculpture, architecture or any other form of artistic expression constitutes an outstanding contribution to the universal heritage of humanity.

Princess of Asturias Award for Literature: on the individual or group of individuals whose literary work represents an outstanding contribution to universal literature.

Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose creative work or research represents an outstanding contribution to the benefit of humanity in the fields of History, Law, Linguistics, Teaching, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Ethics, Philosophy, Geography, Economics, Demography or Anthropology, including the disciplines corresponding to each of these fields.

Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose creative and investigative work in any type of humanistic activity or in any activity related to social communication, within the framework of the sciences and disciplines that both fields of activity encompass, represents an outstanding contribution to universal culture.

Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose research, findings and/or inventions represent an outstanding contribution to the progress and welfare of humanity in the fields of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, Chemistry, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Earth and Space Sciences and Technological Sciences, including those disciplines corresponding to each of these fields and their related techniques.

Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose work with another or others in areas such as public health, universal education, environmental protection and social and economic development, among others, constitutes an outstanding contribution at the international level.

Princess of Asturias Award for Sports: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose lives and work are not only examples to others, but who have also contributed in an extraordinary manner through their efforts to the advancement, nurturing, fostering or dissemination of sport

Princess of Asturias Award for Concord: on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose work contributes outstandingly to the defence of human rights, to the promotion of peace, freedom, solidarity, the protection of heritage and, in general, to the progress and understanding of humanity.

The Awards Ceremony is considered one of the most important cultural events on the international calendar. HM The King made his first speech in public as Prince of Asturias at the age of thirteen at the first Awards Ceremony in 1981. Since then, the words, thoughts and ideas he has expressed in the course of the different Awards Ceremonies have become one of our greatest legacies.



The ceremony features speeches by prominent intellectuals. Through these speeches, they have revealed fundamental parts of their thinking and life’s work, giving shape to what is nowadays the Foundation’s great moral heritage. Those to have addressed the audience in the Campoamor Theatre include Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Yehudi Menuhin, Vaclav Havel, Susan Sontag, Tzvetan Todorov, Leonard Cohen, Paul Auster, Martha Nussbaum, Mario Vargas Llosa and Woody Allen.

HRH Princess Leonor de Borbón y Ortiz is Heir to the Crown of Spain and has been the Honorary President of the Princess of Asturias Foundation since her father’s proclamation as King on 19th June 2014. HRH The Princess of Asturias gives her first public speech at the 2019 Princess Asturias Awards ceremony.

In addition to the Foundation’s main activity, namely the granting and presentation of the Awards, in 1983 the Foundation created a Music Department as part of its endeavours to contribute to fostering culture at its highest levels of expression. This now boasts three choirs (children, youth and adults), whose honorary conductors are Jesús López Cobos and Krzysztof Penderecki, as well as an International Music School.

 

This School brings together overtwo hundred students of various nationalities in the summer courses it organizes every year in Asturias.