prize

The Hasselblad Foundation has awarded its 2013 prize to the Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta. The jury highlighted the fact that Fontcuberta “is one of the most imaginative contemporary photographers” today. This is the most prestigious award at international level in the field of photography. It comes with 1 million Swedish crowns (around €110,000). The award ceremony took place in Barcelona on Thursday evening. In October, Gothenburg’s Art Museum will hold an exhibition on Fontcuberta’s work. His creations “adopt original and playful conceptual perspectives, which particularly explore photography conventions, means of representation and claims to truth”, stated the jury.

The former President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has collected the ‘Premi Internacional Catalunya’, a prestigious prize recognising individuals who have greatly contributed to the development of cultural, scientific and human values around the world with their work. In the award ceremony held in the Palace of the Catalan Government, in Barcelona, Lula da Silva has asked Catalans and Europeans “to fight to guarantee the Welfare State”, which was achieved with so much effort. He also praised Catalonia as “a moral and political model for all democratic people” and “a world symbol of the fight for freedom and social progress”. The award was announced in April but the ceremony was postponed due to Lula da Silva’s recovery process after he suffered from cancer.

The American crime fiction writer won the sixth RBA Prize worth €125,000 for his work ‘The Black Box’. The novel, which was the winner out of 217 entries, revolves around an unsolved murder that took place during the Los Angeles Riots 20 years ago. The main character uncovers that the murder was premeditated after finding a bullet linked to the crime and seeks the ‘black box’ needed to solve the case.

From Sunday to Wednesday, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), located in Tarragona, hosted a chemistry conference in order to discuss the latest discoveries in this discipline. Six chemistry Nobel Prize winners participated in the ‘Southern Catalonia Nobel Campus’, as well as Finn Kydland, who won the Nobel Prize of Economics in 2004. Kydland gave the opening speech. The chemistry days took place at the PortAventura conference centre, located next to the Costa Daurada amusement park.

The Barcelona-raised sociologist Manuel Castells has received the 2012 Holberg International Memorial Prize in Bergen, Norway. This award is considered to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in the field of sociology. The jury considered his book ‘Communication Power’ to be “essential for a new understanding of politics”. Castells holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair at the University of Southern California, he is Research Professor at Catalonia’s distance-learning university (UOC) and Professor Emeritus at the University of California (Berkeley).

Savall is awarded the world’s most prestigious prize, offered by the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation in Denmark, for his entire artistic career. The jury recognised Savall as “one of the most important forces behind the renaissance of early music and the discovery of forgotten music”. The Catalan musician is one of the world’s most important researchers of ancient music and interpreters of viol. He developed his career with his wife, the soprano Montserrat Figueras, with whom he founded several ensembles and carried out research. Savall dedicated the prize to her, who passed away in November. Savall told ACN: “When I’m performing at a concert it’s when I am at my most happy”.

The former President of Brazil has been awarded this prestigious International prize that recognises individuals who have decisively contributed with their work to the development of cultural, scientific and human values around the world. Last year’s winner was the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Other winners are Jimmy Carter, Aung San Suu Kyi, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Harold Bloom, Jacques Yves Cousteau, Karl Popper, Amartya Sen, Václav Havel, or Jacques Delors. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been honoured with the prize for “his policies at the service of fair economic growth”, significantly reducing poverty in Brazil.