Felipe VI warns freedoms are ‘like metals, subject to erosion’ at award for journalist Miguel Ángel Aguilar
Speaking at the Congress of Deputies, Felipe VI presented the June 15 prize for constitutional values to veteran journalist Miguel Ángel Aguilar, using the ceremony to rally institutional defence of freedoms won in Spain’s democratic transition.
A veteran chronicler of Spanish democracy
Miguel Ángel Aguilar, 83, has spent nearly six decades covering Spanish politics, first entering the Cortes in 1966 under the Franco dictatorship. Over 16 legislatures he witnessed leadership changes, majorities, votes, and the great and grave moments of a democracy now approaching its 50th anniversary. At the ceremony, the parliamentary journalist and 20minutos columnist defended his style of “personal contact and eyewitness testimony,” insisting that a journalist’s independence lies in the ability to maintain their own criteria.
A journalist’s independence must be measured by their capacity to maintain their own criteria.
The King’s warning on eroding freedoms
Presenting the sixth edition of the June 15 prize, Felipe VI drew on Aguilar’s own metaphor that liberties “are subject to erosion, oxidizable like metals.” The monarch declared that it is vital to keep fighting to consolidate, care for, and develop freedoms, not to take them for granted. He warned that forgetfulness can undermine what society is, and stated that reinforcing liberties is a responsibility of all democrats and all state institutions, including the Crown.
What matters is to keep fighting — once freedoms are won — to consolidate, care for, and develop them; not take them for granted; not let time tarnish and cover them with rust. I am fully committed to this.
Echoes of the Transition
Both the King and Aguilar invoked the democratic transition that followed the death of Francisco Franco. Felipe VI called it “an enormous collective exercise in civism,” recalling the first free elections on 15 June 1977, which the award commemorates, and the ratification of the Constitution on 6 December 1978. He stressed that memory is not a “fake repertoire of nostalgia” but the roots of identity, and that forgetfulness can undermine what we are.
Forgetfulness can also undermine what we are.
The award and its promoters
The prize is granted by the civic platform España Juntos Sumamos, led by Victoria Carvajal and former deputy José Ignacio Prendes. Previous recipients include banker Jaime Carvajal, the NGO Taxis sin fronteras, and former Bank of Spain governor Pablo Hernández de Cos. The ceremony in the Constitutional Hall of the Congress of Deputies was attended by Congress President Francina Armengol, Digital Transition Minister Óscar López, and parliamentary spokespeople from PP, PSOE, and Vox, among other officials and journalists.
A call for lost concord
Aguilar used his speech to recall the spirit of the Transition, when “mutual renunciation of maximal programs made possible a path of civil, intellectual, and cordial understanding.” He contrasted that with today, saying such attitudes of concord above disagreements “are now missed.” Armengol, for her part, demanded “freedom and truth against manipulation,” underscoring the contemporary relevance of the defence of constitutional values.
