King Felipe and Queen Letizia travelled to Pamplona to award the Gold Medals for Fine Arts for prize recipients for the years 2020.
Arriving at the Baluarte Congress Palace and Navarra Auditorium in the Autonomic Community’s capital, Their Majesties were welcomed by State and local authorities, before sitting down for the ceremony itself.
The ceremony began with a welcome from the Minister for Culture and Sports’s Protocol Chief, which was followed by an speech by the Mayor of Pamplona and the laudatio of the winners by Culture and Sports Minister Miquel Iceta.
A laudatio is a speech of praise for anyone winning any kind of awards. Following the interventions by political authorities, a video was shown about the winners and the Royal Decree that awarded the Medals was read.
King Felipe and Queen Letizia then arrived on stage to hand out the prizes. Because of health safety measures still in place, there were no handshakes, and King Felipe and Queen Letizia alternated in handing out the 32 prizes.
Actress Emma Suárez and the President of Navarra Autonomic Community then offered a few words, before King Felipe made a speech, during which he said: “Culture […] always accompanies us, pushes us forward, consoles us, entertains us, guides us, interrogates us, helps us build a better world; culture […], which makes us feel part of a common history, may be the result of individual work, but is a patrimony that all of the Spanish people share”.
The King’s speech concluded the ceremony, and, before making their way back to Madrid, Their Majesties held a brief meeting with the award winners and all other authorities present.
The Gold Medals for Fine Arts are awarded each year by the Ministry of Culture and Sports to all those people or entities that were particularly remarkable “in the field of artistic creation, offering noteworthy services or specifically promoting the teaching, the development and the sharing of art, or the conservation of the national artistic patrimony”, according to the Royal House’s website.
"; n.innerHTML = "window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({mode:'thumbnails-a', container:'taboola-below-article-thumbnails', placement:'Below Article Thumbnails', target_type: 'mix'});"; insertAfter(t, e); insertAfter(n, t) }injectWidgetByMarker('tbmarker');
