The Jury for the 1999 Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities, convened in Oviedo, comprised of Mr. Enrique Barón, Ms. Adela Cortina, Mr. Ricardo Díez Hochleitner, Ms. Isabel Gómez Acebo, Mr. Javier Gómez Cuesta, Mr. Javier González Ferrari, Mr. Juan Luis Iglesias Prada, Ms. Catalina Luca de Tena, Mr. José Luis Meilán Gil, Mr. Hans Meinke, Mr. Manuel Olivencia, Mr. Ernesto Sáenz de Buruaga, Mr. Salvador Sánchez-Terán, Mr. Ricardo Senabre, Mr. Jesús de la Serna, Mr. Enrique de Ybarra, chaired by Mr. Domingo García-Sabell, with Mr. Román Suárez Blanco as secretary, has decided unanimously to grant the 1999 Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities to the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Colombia.

The Jury place great value on the long-standing tradition of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, which has done outstanding work aimed at knowing, studying and promoting Spanish -particularly its Latin American variants - for over half a century; it has, moreover, extended its prolific research to the fields of philology, ethnography, and indigenous languages, which have brought about a highly productive state of bilingualism by coexisting alongside Spanish. Following on in the tradition of the early Spanish settlers in South America, the Instituto Caro y Cuervo has paid equal heed to promoting the knowledge of Spanish and the indigenous languages.

The social and cultural unity that the work of the Instituto has promoted, especially in the fields of communication and humanities, and its exemplary status in Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries is hereby acknowledged.