As I had the honour of describing in the work "Vislumbres" - published by the Spanish Embassy in Italy as a tribute to the personalities who have contributed most to the common history of Italy, Spain and Latin America - Rafael Moneo has managed to masterfully combine his academic, theoretical and creative facets to become the most important figure in Spanish architecture today. And also of world architecture, a fact proven by the submission of this last award in the framework of one of the most prestigious artistic and cultural events of today, the Venice Biennale.

From that first connection with the Cittá Eterna in the early sixties, Italian culture and architecture were to be crucial in Rafael's training and in the development of his personality as an architect. There he entered contact with Bruno Zevi, a historian who had vindicated organic architecture against the dominance of rationalism in the story of the Modern Movement. And he was able to get to know - through the trips of the second year of the Academy - the most distinguished architecture of Greece, Istanbul, Vienna, Amsterdam or Paris; which did not prevent Italy from remaining, for him, reference letter maximum for interpreting the work of modern architects of a more monumental and expressionist style.

In the seventies Moneo maintained a close relationship with important Italian architects such as Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. During this time he also grew to admire not only the history and architectural theories of the country, but also the industrial patronage of families such as the Olivetti, whose model he considered parallel to that of the Navarrese businessman Félix Huarte (who had promoted the Torres Blancas building by Sáenz de Oíza and in which Moneo himself collaborated as a student) and whose relationship with his daughter María Josefa was forged in the commission for the University Museum of Navarre, in 2015.

From the1980s onwards, as chairman of the Harvard GSD, his degree program took on an international dimension, culminating in the award of the award Pritzker (the Nobel Prize for Architecture) in 1996. Rafael, however, was continuously involved in competitions in Italy. Specifically in Venice, he took part in the Cannaregio competition in 1978 and won the Palazzo del Cinema competition for the Lido in 1990. A project which he realised in a brilliant exercise of balance between tradition and modernity still to be built.

On the other hand, Moneo's figure has also been widely recognised by Italian culture. Since 1992 he has been a member of the San Luca Academy in Rome and in 1998 he received the prestigious award Feltrinelli from the hands of the President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. In his speech of thanks, he himself expressed his joy for a recognition that fulfilled "the dreams of the young architect I was in Rome".

These awards have been followed by many others, both near and far, such as the award Príncipe de Viana 1993, the award Príncipe de Asturias 2012, the UIA Gold Medal 1996 or the Praemium Imperiale of Japan in 2017. On receiving the Piranesi Internationalaward in 2010 - for the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, a symbol of the public architecture of the young Spanish democracy - he has not lacked occasions of gratitude, in which he has often recalled that first trip to Italy, which marks a new stage in the city of Venice: "The trip to Rome incorporated into my later work that respect for the built environment, not to say for history. [...] That is something I learned in Rome, and I am not referring to what I learned in the Pantheon, but in the breeding ground that was Rome at the time".