Madrid (EFE).- Felipe VI will present the 2023 King of Spain International Journalism Awards on June 15, the most prestigious in the Ibero-American sphere, endowed with 10,000 euros each, which this year will be 40 years since its first edition.
The economic endowment places these awards at the level of the Pulitzers, which were attended by 133 candidacies from 17 countries for the six categories recognized by these awards, in which the works of journalists from Mexico, Colombia and Spain were finalists.
The award ceremony will take place for yet another year in the Gabriela Mistral amphitheater of the Casa de América in Madrid, an event that will be special on this occasion to mark the fortieth anniversary of the awards, which have been awarded annually since 1983 and were created by the EFE Agency and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).
On this occasion, the amphitheater will premiere its scenery and the gala will remember former winners, great figures in journalism, such as the Spanish-Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa; the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez Reverte, the Spanish writer Carmen Posadas, the also Spanish Juan José Millás and the Colombian Daniel Samper.
Also remembered will be the Brazilian photographer Sebastián Salgado, the Spanish journalist Gervasio Sánchez or the former correspondent for Televisión Española in Colombia Ana Cristina Navarro, today coordinator of the Pedagogy Strategy of the Truth Commission in that country.
Investigative, environmental and human journalism
The report “Fentanyl: future for drug traffickers, death for humanity”, published in the Mexican media N+, will receive the King of Spain International Prize for Narrative Journalism.
After five months of investigation, the team made up of Víctor Emmanuel Valles Mata and Adrián Tinoco managed to enter one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s fentanyl drug laboratories for the first time and interview minors who work in the manufacturing process and bosses. local.
The Spanish journalist Jesús Martínez and the photographer Marc Javierre-Kohan will receive the prize in the category of International Cooperation and Humanitarian Action from Felipe VI for “J’accuse! The looting of Rosario’s house”, published in Frontera Digital.
The award-winning work narrates the drama of Rosario, who at 98 only wants to recover a photo of her husband who died half a century ago, the only one she keeps of him, after he mistakenly opened his house to the judicial procession for an eviction.
The Spanish public corporation RTVE will receive the Environmental Journalism award for the report “Living Soils”, broadcast by Televisión Española on June 16 and directed by Eduardo Laplaza García (director), Marisol Soto Romero (script) and Francesc Tomas (direction). , of the environmental program “The green beetle”.
The production puts the focus on regenerative agriculture and how, by conserving living soils, biodiversity, soil moisture and carbon storage are preserved, among other benefits in times of extreme heat and long drought, like last summer in Spain .
Exile, the migratory drama and young journalism
The Mexican journalist Víctor Núñez Jaime will receive the Cultural Journalism award for “The second exile of Sergio Ramírez”, an extensive profile of the Nicaraguan writer published by the Mexican newspaper “Milenio”.
With the drama of immigration once again present, the Colombian Manuel Salvador Saldarriaga will receive from Felipe VI the award in the Photography Journalism category with “Risking your life crossing the Darién Gap”, a photographic series published in El Colombiano from Medellin.
Saldarriaga, who was already awarded individually in 2010 and 2020, was recognized for his work for this newspaper by images of migrants of various nationalities, including Venezuelans, Haitians, Ecuadorians and others, who cross this jungle from Colombia to Panama on a route that He longs to come to the United States.
Also representing Colombia, the independent digital media Cuestión Pública will be recognized with the Journalism Award for the Ibero-American Media.
The purpose of the King of Spain International Journalism Awards is to recognize the informative work of Spanish and Portuguese-language journalism professionals from the States that make up the Ibero-American Community of Nations and from the nations with which Spain maintains ties of a historical nature and relations cultural and cooperative
Awards, created by the EFE Agency and the AECID
These awards, created by the EFE Agency and the AECID, are the promotion of the best journalism in the two great Iberian international languages, Spanish and Portuguese, and they do so in a geographical cultural space that covers all the continents, promoting the highest quality of the journalistic profession of Latin America.
In addition to the financial prize, the winners will receive a sculpture by the artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios from the hands of Felipe VI.