Assembled together in Oviedo, the 1997 Prince of Asturias Award Jury for Social Sciences, comprised of Gonzalo Anes y Álvarez de Castrillón, Íñigo Cavero Lataillade, Eugenio Domingo Solans, Jaime García Añoveros, Manuel Jesús González, Francisco González Rodríguez, Luis González Seara, María del Carmen Iglesias, Aurelio Menéndez Menéndez, Manuel Menéndez Menéndez, José Manuel Otero Novas, Gregorio Peces-Barba, Victoria Rodríguez Escudero, Jordi Solé Tura, Juan Urrutia Elejalde, presided over by Manuel Fraga Iribarne and with José López-Muñiz y González-Madroño acting as secretary, has unanimously decided to grant the 1997 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences to Martín de Riquer Morera.

Eminent philologist, literary critic and historian, he is one of our country´s maximum authorities on Castilian and Catalan literatures, in addition to being a scholar of the Provençal and French traditions, especially from the Medieval and Renaissance periods. He is the author of studies on Ausiàs March, Boscán, Ramón Llull, and Cervantes. Standing out among his many works are "Cervantes y El Quijote", "Introducción a la lectura de El Quijote", "El Quijote de Avellaneda", "Historia de la Literatura Catalana", and "Estudios sobre el Amadís de Gaula". All of his work is characterized by its multidisciplinary nature, with an open, non-exclusionary approach, representative of a humanistic mind that identifies with the entire cultural history of Spain, in all of its pluralities and vicinities. He is, all in all, a grand Catalan and Spanish intellectual.

Oviedo, 9 May 1997