To receive a award is to receive a recognition that, in the dimension of the award Prince of Asturias, transcends many personal, family, professional, geographical, etc. aspects. At this time, to reward means, with even more precision if possible, to praise those people who exemplify values in which to set our goals.

Rafael Moneo has made an exemplary career easy and this worthy distinction has done reasonable justice among other emeritus candidates. He began to be worthy of evaluation many years ago, when he was a student at high school of the Jesuits in Tudela (Navarra). There he obtained his first distinctions. In those "dignities" -that is how the awards were called-, effort and behavior were valued, and at the end of the course the other prizes were awarded, the grades of each subject. His interest in culture made him already be student "worthy" at the age of 10 and he continues to be so today, on his seventy-fifth birthday.

Rafael Moneo is an example of just this: of effort and behavior. This leads him to contemplate his work with satisfaction, knowing that its end is not the end but precisely the continued effort and behavior of the man, the architect, the teacher, the friend, the citizen... To think in today's time and in the diverse space has led him to be an architect immersed in a global way of thinking.

In addition, he has also been an example in his most intimate environment: in his family, in his studio, in his friends, in his fellow citizens. In his generosity, Raphael has multiplied. He has offered attention and committee to every problem; he has made the small need a virtue of his projects and of the most frightened student , a person open to the horizon.

All of us who surround him, in his professional and academic world, are amazed by his inexhaustible capacity to get up every day looking for something different and exciting that life has in store for him. He seeks form in the reason of necessity and, with the material reason that gives substance to what he contemplates, he produces beauty and serenity.

Architecture is finally proud to have an uncontested award that is summarized in a constant search, where creativity is at the service of man in its most humanistic meaning. This award somehow reaches the whole world of architecture, and that of its teaching, in a special way; how fantastic it is to always look ahead and see it there with the strength and youth of its privileged way of seeing with certainty the light of architecture.