The Diplomat
King Felipe VI presided this Monday at the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste, in Cuacos de Yuste (Cáceres), over the presentation of the 19th European Charles V Prize to the European Committee of the Regions, an institution that, in his words, reflects the importance of “diversity as a source of wealth,” a reality of which Spain, “with its strongly decentralized political system, is very aware.”
The European Committee of the Regions is the consultative assembly that brings together local and regional representatives of the European Union and gives a direct voice to subnational entities within the institutional framework of the European Union. The jury for the award, granted by the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation, highlighted its contribution to integrating European cities and regions into the common project, enabling citizens to raise their everyday problems and concerns with EU institutions, thus ensuring that European Union legislation incorporates the territorial dimension and respects the principle of subsidiarity.
The King presented the award to the current President of the European Committee of the Regions, Kata Tüttő, and to the acting President of the Regional Government of Andalusia and First Vice-President of the European Committee of the Regions, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla. Among those attending the ceremony were the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera; and the President of the Regional Government of Extremadura and President of the Board of Trustees of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation, María Guardiola. and the President of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary, María Isabel Perelló.
After the award ceremony, the King delivered a speech in which he stated that “the essence of Europe is diversity,” because, “in contrast to other regions of the world where it is possible to travel thousands of kilometers in any direction without the landscape perceptibly changing, here, on our continent, it is enough to travel 20 or 30 kilometers to find other landscapes, other architecture, other traditions, other languages.”
“Valuing diversity as a factor, not of exclusion, but of enrichment, is an ongoing task that concerns us all, Europeans, if we want to honor our history and our extraordinary cultural heritage,” and, in this endeavor, “the European Committee of the Regions is, perhaps, the institution that best reflects the diversity of local communities in the EU and, at the same time, contributes to ensuring its integration into a common project.”
“By giving a voice to local and regional authorities in the legislative process, the Committee embodies a key principle in European integration: the principle of subsidiarity, which guides the management of public affairs always towards the most appropriate scale, reconciling efficiency and added value with proximity to the citizen,” because “the multiple levels of government, united by institutional loyalty, are the political expression of our richness: proof of the maturity of our democratic systems,” he continued.
“Spain, with a strongly decentralized political system, is very aware of this reality,” the King emphasized. “Our representatives on the Committee have been demonstrating initiative and commitment for decades in areas that, while priorities for Europe, are also priorities for our autonomous communities and our cities,” he added.
Therefore, in the face of “some trends of our time towards atomization, fragmentation and the exaltation of difference for its own sake, without a higher reason and, sometimes, even at the expense of the common good”, the Committee of the Regions “must remain the complete opposite: a meeting point between Europeans, born from the recognition and vindication of diversity through its authentic guarantee, which are the democratic constitutions of the Member States within the framework of a united Europe”, he warned.
The European Charles V Prize is awarded annually at the Royal Monastery of Yuste, as part of the celebrations for May 9th, Europe Day, to recognize the work of individuals, organizations, projects, or initiatives that have contributed to the general understanding and enhancement of Europe’s cultural, social, scientific, and historical values, as well as to the process of European integration and development.
The people awarded this prize so far have been Jacques Delors (1995), Wilfried Martens (1998), Felipe González (2000), Mikhail Gorbachev (2002), Jorge Sampaio (2004), Helmut Kohl (2006), Simone Veil (2008), Javier Solana (2011), José Manuel Durão Barroso (2014), Sofia Corradi (2016), Marcelino Oreja Aguirre (2017), Antonio Tajani (2018), the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes project (2019), Angela Merkel (2021), the European Disability Forum (2022), António Guterres (2023) and Mario Draghi (2024) and Josep Borrell (2025).
