A few months ago, at the congress of the Society of Historical programs of study , this institution awarded two distinctions to two people linked and dedicated to the culture and history of Navarre: Maria Ángeles Mezquíriz and Faustino Menéndez Pidal. Now, we are pleased to receive the nomination of the latter to receive the award Príncipe de Viana awarded by the Government of Navarra, which, since its beginnings, has been given, on different occasions, to people who with their submission and their good work have left a deep mark on the knowledge of our past.

Faustino Menéndez Pidal is a prestigious historian and academic. He is a member of the Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía and was named its director in 1993. He is a numerary member of the Royal Academy of History since 1991 and a universal specialist in the field of heraldry, recognized with numerous distinctions by the Académie Internationale d'Héraldique and the high school International Academy of Genealogy and Heraldry. In the field of sigillography, he is an expert associated with the committee International Sigillography, of the committee International Archives. His lines of research are sigillography, heraldic emblems and other signs, as sources for history, especially of the Age average. The obligations he has had to face in all these prestigious institutions have not taken away his time to collaborate with all his efforts in local institutions such as the City Council of Cintruénigo, in outstanding Navarrese publications such as the monograph on Navarrese medieval heraldry (which signature with Javier Martínez de Aguirre) and in projects such as the Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art of the University of Navarra, of which he is a professor and regular partner .

Faustino's extensive curriculum vitae, his publications, distinctions, awards and decorations, are enough to realize that he has not wasted time, and that work and perseverance have been his rule of conduct throughout several lustrums. National and international specialists have valued his contribution to history, especially to heraldry.

Through diligence and daily work , Faustino Menéndez Pidal has achieved excellence, of which so much is said today, in so many fields, often without knowing exactly what it consists of. Excellence is 'that superior quality that makes a person, an institution, a work or a project worthy of appreciation and recognition' . According to Aristotle ' it is not enough to know it, we must try to have it and use it ' , although in many occasions, as Goethe reminds us, ' it is difficult to find, but more difficult to value ' .

Don Faustino is a lover of history, of a past that must be contemplated, in these times we live in, not as a past-load to be totally detached from, but as resource of a past-lighthouse, which gives perspective, orients and points the way in the historical journey, so that our relationship with that history and particularly with the ideas and people who overcame their contexts, become moral springs.

Those of us who know him and have been close to him have had the opportunity to perceive other qualities that he always displays: delicacy, refinement and listening skills. Those who visit Don Faustino know of his closeness, simplicity and wisdom, whether in the Royal Academy of History or, without haste, during a summer afternoon, under a century-old tree in the garden of the Navascués ancestral home, in the center of the town of Cintruénigo. Don Faustino is always ready to help, he even offers his friendship; because he and also Inés, his wife, have practiced in all times and fortune, that Latin aphorism that says: ' Amicis quaelibet hora ' (For friends, any hour). The historical data , the valuations and interpretations of so many other facts of the past take on a very special dimension in that garden, next to the eighteenth-century sundial designed by Francisco del Plo, where one breathes the intimate calm of so many things that speak for themselves and teach us when we know how to question them as they deserve.

Moments of congratulations and also of gratitude, remembering this last virtue, by which we recognize, inwardly and outwardly, what we have received and reciprocate in some way for what we have generously given. It is said that, of all human feelings, gratitude is the most ephemeral of all. And there is some truth in that. Knowing how to be grateful is a value that is rarely thought of. Our elders have repeated it to us popularly: ' Of well-born people it is to be grateful ' . Don Juan de Palafox, with whom the present writer and Don Faustino met a few months ago, used to repeat: "Three things make me very tired, and the fourth abhors my soul: first, the proud poor; second, the greedy rich; third, the insolent magistrate; fourth, the ungrateful to benefits".

With gratitude for the work done and with deep admiration and congratulations, I wish to repeat something that we have expressed to you on many occasions in many other forums: Thank you, ab imo pectore, thank you very much!