We present our most socially-minded awards

Every year, our Social Awards Ceremony becomes a tribute to all the people and organizations who dedicate their lives to helping others and who, through their efforts, manage to improve the world in which we live.

As in previous editions, H. M. Queen Sofia presented the awards to the winners during a ceremony that included speeches by Antonio Huertas, President of Fundación MAPFRE, and Milagros Paniagua, Secretary General for Objectives and Inclusion and Social Protection Policies, and which was attended by the President of the Constitutional Court and the President of the General Council of the Judiciary, among other dignitaries.

Antonio Huertas invited those present to“look forward with optimism and determination and to take advantage of the years that remain in this decade of the 2030 Agenda to achieve its goals as fully as possible, particularly the social goals, those that most affect people”.

The Julio Castelo Matrán International Insurance Award, which is awarded biennially, was granted to the person who until a few months ago was president of the Spanish Union of Insurance Companies (UNESPA), Pilar González de Frutos for her work ‘The necessary reform of supplementary social protection in Spain’.

On receiving the award, the author of the study recalled that over more than four decades dedicated to the sector “I have been able to see how insurance companies are key in supporting the economic and social development of a country, in addition to being a good mechanism for the redistribution of wealth”. According to González de Frutos, “We have, as a society, the responsibility to find formulas that combine the sustainability of our welfare state with its financing in the medium and long term as well as the necessary intergenerational equity.”

The Award for the project or initiative with the best social impact went to Madrid City Council Fire Department’s Suicide Attempt Intervention Unit. Sergio Tubío Rey received the award on behalf of the entire team.

This Unit arose from the lack of solutions to all the questions that this group of professionals asked themselves when faced with suicides: “What could we, as firefighters, have done to try to reverse the situation prior to the fatal outcome, if we had arrived in time?” In the search for explanations, and with the aim of understanding suicidal behavior, throughout their 10 years of operation of the experience, they have met numerous groups that silently share the same purpose, including, “for example, Papageno, Ubuntu, La Niña Amarilla, Despres del Suicidi and Afasib, organizations to which we have decided to donate the full amount of this award in recognition and gratitude for their work in raising awareness, support and dissemination”.  At the end of his speech, Sergio read part of the poem ‘Let’s Talk about Suicide’ that Lova Lois, a young Basque poet and singer, wrote for Aidatu to mark the recent World Suicide Prevention Day:

“Let’s save lives, let’s illuminate, let’s be light, let’s talk about suicide. For others, but especially for ourselves, let’s influence, let’s educate, let’s illuminate. Let’s illuminate the judgment, the unknown, the fear. Let’s be the light for others and ourselves.

Let’s talk about suicide, let’s be light with our shadows, let’s talk about suicide, let’s be light”.