Iñaki Gabilondo, Ana Peleteiro and Juan Diego Botto, infoLibre 2021 awards
To the rhythm of Arranca The Baroque Zambra, by Andreas Prittwitz, the 2021 InfoLibre Awards have begun, held this Thursday at the Ateneo de Madrid. The event has awarded Iñaki Gabilondo (InfoLibre 2021 Award) for his professional work and commitment to society; Ana Peleteiro (Equality Award); Juan Diego Botto (Prize for Culture); César Moya Villasante (Prize for Freethinkers) and the spokesperson for the Trega Association, Sonia Jalda, representing the residential workers (Prize for Social Commitment). Coinciding with the 25N, International Day against Sexual Violence, the president of the Congress, Meritxell Batet, has closed the act denouncing the chauvinist scourge, while the InfoLibre newsroom has read the names of the 37 murdered during 2021.
After more than 50 by profession, Iñaki Gabilondo has been recognized by InfoLibre for "defending an honest, rigorous journalism, committed to democracy, progressive, supportive, free and participatory", after he said goodbye "deeply happy" to the microphones September 21. Gabilondo says goodbye to the radio in style after just a week ago received the Ondas award in honor of his long journalistic career, which runs from his beginnings in the SER during the Transition, until his last years in Iñaki's voice and various programs on Movistar +, where he continues to collaborate. The president of the Congress, Meritbell Batet, and Jesús Maraña have presented the award, to whom he has been grateful for the award and has assured: he is retiring".
The Equality award has been awarded to the Olympic athlete Ana Peleteiro for her activism on social networks such as Instagram or TikTok, where she has transmitted her feminist ideals and against xenophobia. The young Galician woman has become a benchmark for the new generations, not only for taking the bronze in the triple jump in Tokyo in 2016, but also for her rebellious attitude towards injustices. He already demonstrated it during the interview that RTVE conducted after having won the Olympic medal, when he corrected his partner Ray Zapata, also black and also a medalist for Spain, for using euphemisms when talking about his skin color: "We are black, what color. They are colored, they change more than the sun".
At the event, Peleteiro has been proud of her principles and declared: "Every time I receive an award outside of sport, I think that my parents have done a little bit well, and that I have received the values that they have taught me throughout of my whole life. "
The Argentine-Spanish actor and director Juan Diego Botto received in September the National Theater Award for the work A moonless night, premiered at the Spanish Theater and in which he sings a monologue on the last days of Federico García Lorca. This afternoon he was awarded by InfoLibre for "promoting the values of culture, essential for democratic quality and progress." The playwright's mother, Cristina Rota, was in charge of collecting the award, although Botto wanted to be present through a video issued by the organization. "I wanted to apologize to the people of infoLibre and thank them for this award. It has more value for me coming from who it comes from: a medium that I follow since its birth, independent, brave, that dares to ask uncomfortable questions to power and that is today more necessary and important than ever, "said the actor.
The residential workers, and on behalf of all of them, Sonia Jalda, the spokesperson for the Association of Residential Workers of Galicia (TreGa), have received the Social Commitment award for the work that these professionals had in the nursing homes during the hardest days of the first wave. "We are so normalized that we have to fight for our residents that we did not expect someone to want to recognize our work."
César Moya Villasante has received the award in the Freethinkers category for being an active member of InfoLibre "faithful to the values" of the newspaper. This retired maintenance engineer has written articles on a variety of topics for the newspaper, always sticking to the present: the Budgets for 2022 and the (everlasting) opposition opposition, the threat of the extreme right, telecommuting or ERE. "The best readers are those that can be read, they have been the words with which they have wanted to decorate Moya when he collected his award.
The event has prepared by the hand of the advertising creative Nico Ordozgoiti a magazine cover dedicated to each of the winners, in which he explains with an attractive design why they have awarded the award to the different personalities. The awards have been organized in collaboration with Fundación La Caixa. The jury made up of the InfoLibre steering committee (Jesús Maraña, editorial director; Daniel Basteiro, director; Evangelina Casullo, CDO; and Manuel Rico, research director) and some of the prominent firms of said newspaper, such as Luis García Montero, Helena Resano, Luis Arroyo and Cristina Monge.
