The historian Joaquim Nadal, a man of letters and now converted by politics into the new Minister of Research and Universities, has already caught the tone of his new occupation very quickly and yesterday he proclaimed to the four winds that "without science we are not going anywhere ”. He could not have chosen a better day to say it, at the awards ceremony for the XII edition of Vanguardia de la Ciencia, organized by this newspaper and the Fundación Catalunya-La Pedrera. We should all be very satisfied with the level of excellence of research in Catalonia and, as Nadal said, we must ensure that this image of scientific power that it has internationally "is perceptible and tangible" also among the Catalan citizens themselves.
If there are things that are going well, it is worth highlighting them and giving them their fair value. This is what we humbly try to do from La Vanguardia and that is why it is so important to be able to organize these awards annually that highlight the work of young researchers. For two years, we have been doing positive discrimination and the awards that are discussed by the jury have a special requirement that they be led by women, either as first author or as principal investigator. The reason is to overcome the existing inequality in this sector, where the majority of researchers are men. Future generations must be encouraged not to think that this job is not for them. For this reason, among all the candidates, Neus Martínez and Pilar Navarro were awarded the first prize; Inés Marín with the second, and Cátia Monteiro with the third. All of them with works related to cancer that they explained with an overflowing passion.
Nadal also congratulated himself on the initiative of our newspaper to disclose scientific activity so that it is not covered by other information that may be more attractive but much less important. In recent years, Catalonia has become a benchmark in advances against cancer and can boast of having the only laboratory, Hipra, that has achieved a vaccine against covid in Europe, among many other achievements. All of these are realities and the result of good public-private collaboration. It is time, then, to congratulate us.
