Address by the Defensora del Pueblo, Soledad Becerril, at the XIV Manuel Broseta Co-existence Award Ceremony (Valencia)
We know that nations evolve and thrive on the basis of initiatives and contributions of members of the public. I am not referring, on this occasion, to their productive capabilities; I’m referring to knowledge, and to their exemplary, honest behaviour. The Spanish nation shaped through codices and laws; described and narrated in chronicles; carved out in successive historical deeds is the outcome, the combination, of what generations have done or built. Rather like an ancient manuscript, by way of a palimpsest, on which the marks and traces of what came before are written and conserved.
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To value, cherish, honour the memory of a distinguished Spanish professor, Manuel Broseta, who over a long period of time taught hundreds and hundreds of students from his chair in the Faculty of Law at the University of Valencia; wrote a large number of scholarly works; gave able speeches at the Lower and Upper Chambers of the Spanish Parliament… that is to say, everything that Professor Broseta did to help make modern-day Spain more illustrated, more documented, more respected, deserves to be pointed out and borne in mind. And today, at the award ceremony for this prize awarded annually by the Foundation that bears his name, I would like to point this out and make it clear.
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You will understand that, as Defender of Rights and Liberties, I am referring to terrorism, that of the terrorist group ETA which for decades and decades did us so much harm, harm impossible to redress. By putting an end to the life of someone like Professor Manuel Broseta, it sought to do as much harm as possible to Spanish democracy, to the state under the rule of law, to that state and to that law to which the professor had devoted his university career and academic life. Because ETA terrorism was directed at a nation constituted into a social and democratic State under the rule of law. Consequently, we democrats should all feel alluded to when mention is made of that terrorism, which does not apologise but just says malevolently that “it regrets what happened”, as if it had been an impossible-to-restrain natural phenomenon. The terror exerted by ETA put an end to the lives of some nine hundred people. Many of us could have been among the victims.
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As chairwoman of the jury for the 2015 Foundation Award, an appointment that I appreciate and am grateful for, I would like to say that the unstinting endeavours of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the institution awarded this 24th prize, is an international institution which over the past decades has become indispensable for protecting people who have fled from wars, for people displaced by persecution, people hunted down because of their beliefs or because of the fact that they are women.
In Spain, the help of the UNHCR is essential in procedures for establishing the refugee status of international protection seekers; it keeps watch over the application of international rules and regulations —international law and European law—; it trains lawyers, civil servants and NGOs who work with refugees and asylum-seekers, and its authorised voice is listened to at the National Asylum and Refuge Commission (Comisión Nacional de Asilo y Refugio).
The people who flee, who cross the Mediterranean in rubber dinghies, who make it to the coasts are met by the hands and arms of people in sleeveless jackets who wrap a blanket around them … and with their arms over their shoulders or cradling the little children in their arms bring them onto land.
If the UNHCR had not existed, it would have had to have been invented, on the spur of the moment, to come to the aid of more than one million people who arrived in Europe by sea in 2015.
I have visited a city, Zaatari, a refugee camp 40 kilometres from Amman that has 79,000 inhabitants, a city that was put up by the UNHCR. There are schools there, hospitals, classrooms for women… It is an admirable city, yet we must not forget that it is a temporary city, not fit for an entire lifetime. In Syria, the end will not be the war, but being able to return home.
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That person, those persons, whose heads loom out of the sea trying to drag little boats in which everyone seems to be begging to be able to reach their destination, deserves the prize that is being awarded today. And as it cannot be given to everyone who is there, to the people who push the little boats, to the people who wrap blankets around shoulders … this Jury is awarding it to the UNHCR, and saying “Thank you very much” to all its members.
