The Estopa duo and, posthumously, the actress Itziar Castro are among those awarded the 2023 Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, announced this afternoon by the Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun. In total, the Council of Ministers, at the proposal of its ministry, has distinguished 37 cultural personalities and entities with the award, among them five posthumously, including the journalist María Teresa Campos, and there has been no winner in the world. of bullfighting. “We have awarded 37 people from multiple facets of the world of culture, and we believe that they are appropriate,” the Minister stressed.
Urtasun had a few words for the five posthumous winners, who in addition to Itziar Castro and María Teresa Campos are the comic artist Carlos Pacheco, the filmmaker Patricia Ferreira and the writer and humorist Miguel López, better known as El Hematocrítico, because, has said, "they are undoubtedly deserving of this medal: they have left their mark on our lives, they have transformed them to make them better and this is precisely the power that culture has."
The Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts is a recognition that distinguishes people and entities that have stood out in the field of artistic and cultural creation or have provided notable services in the promotion, development or dissemination of art and culture or in the conservation of artistic heritage. And among this year's winners are Estopa the actresses Gemma Cuervo and Vicky Peña and the actor Luis Zahera, the film directors Albert Serra and Pablo Berger, the dancers and choreographers Antonio Najarro and Lucía Lacarra, the playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra , the designer Modesto Lomba, the musician, composer and orchestra director Antoni Ros-Marbà, the Sorolla Foundation, the Chillida Leku Museum or the Almagro International Classical Theater Festival.
The Victoria de los Ángeles and Alicia de Larrocha foundations have also been awarded; the screenwriters Isabel Peña (The Kingdom) and Isa Campo (The Double Steps); the director and audiovisual producer José Luis López-Linares; the artist, restorer and glass master Carlos Muñoz de Pablos; the Balearic Cultural Work; the patron and collector Candela Álvarez Soldevilla; the State lawyer of the Ministry of Culture Carmen Acedo; the Sevillian Guild Association of Sacred Art; the jurist Rodrigo Bercovitz Rodríguez-Cano; the clown Pepe Palacio; the Bromera Foundation for the Promotion of Reading; the illuminator Juan Gómez-Cornejo; the librarian Glòria Pérez Salmerón, former director of the National Library of Spain; the Cultural Heritage and Law magazine; El Ranchito - a leading Spanish-speaking European company in the visual effects sector for film, television and advertising - and the Center for Conservation and Restoration of Graphic Documents on the Island of La Palma.
"One of the axes that runs through our conception of culture in this ministry are cultural rights, and access to cultural life by the community is one of those rights. Creative people are, together with institutions such as those that today we also award, a solid guarantee of this access," said Urtasun during the announcement of the winners. And he has assured that "these medals are also a guarantee that freedom of expression and creation must govern each and every one of our gestures in defense of culture, which is in turn the defense of our democracy."
