The Polish journalist and writer Adam Michnik (Warsaw, 1946), one of the main figures of the anti-communist opposition in the eighties of the last century and a benchmark for his defense of democracy, has been distinguished with the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2022, as made public this Wednesday by the jury in charge of its award.
The candidacy of Michnik, founder and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborczay, was proposed by Krzysztof Wielicki, Princess of Asturias Award for Sports 2018. It has been supported, among others, by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize for Literature 2018.
Michnik studied history at the University of Warsaw, where he was in trouble for participating in protests, until he was expelled in 1968, and graduated from distance in 1975. Imprisoned several times since the 1960s, he was one of the founders of the KOR movement ( the committee for the defense of workers) and a member of the Solidarity union since its creation in 1980. He was also one of the promoters of national reconciliation, for which he took as an example the Spanish model of the Moncloa Pacts.
As a journalist, he has been an editor in several independent magazines since 1977 and was part of the management of Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, one of the most prominent publishers of the Polish opposition. In 1989 he became a deputy and founded the independent newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the largest in Central Europe, of which he remains editor-in-chief.
He is also the author, among others, of books on political and historical issues and essays translated into several languages, such as Letters from Prison and Other Essays (1986), The Church and the Left (1992), or In Search of Lost Meaning. The new Eastern Europe (2013), and articles that marked the country’s history, such as the one titled Your President, Our Prime Minister, which made possible the election of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as non-communist Prime Minister in the East.
In addition to being one of the best known and most prominent defenders of human rights in Poland, Michnik is considered one of the fundamental figures in the recovery of democracy in the country, and has always defended dialogue above all kinds of divisions.
This has been the second of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards that are granted this year, in which they celebrate their forty-second edition. Previously, the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts was awarded to the singer Carmen Linares and the dancer and choreographer María Pagés. In the coming weeks, those corresponding to (in order) Social Sciences, Sports, Letters, International Cooperation, Scientific and Technical Research and Harmony will be decided.
The ceremony for the delivery of the Princess of Asturias Awards will be held, as is traditional, in the month of October in a solemn ceremony presided over by the King and Queen, accompanied by the Princess of Asturias and the Infanta Sofía.
Each Princess of Asturias Award is endowed with a sculpture by Joan Miró, the award’s representative symbol, a diploma, a badge and a cash sum of fifty thousand euros.
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