For the sixth consecutive year, OHL has sponsored the XXXIII King of Spain International Journalism Prizes. The award ceremony took place on 13 July at the Casa del Lector auditorium in Madrid, and was presided by the King of Spain, Felipe VI.

The act rewarded renowned journalists in Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, Portugal and Colombia, for their research and dedication to matters of human  interest.

King Felipe congratulated the winners and vouched for the permanence of professional journalism, a job that he “firmly” believes in given that journalists provide a “necessary, irreplaceable and essential task in any democratic society that is aware of its rights and freedoms”.

These prizes, arranged by Agencia EFE and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation since 1983, reward the journalistic effort of professionals dedicated to the press, radio, television, photography and digital/environmental journalism and sustainable development, in Spanish and Portuguese.

In this same act, the Don Quijote Journalism Prize and the King of Spain Latin American Journalism Prize were respectively handed over to the Literature Nobel Prize Winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, and to the journalist Carlos Herrera.

The personalities present included the interim vice-president of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría; the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Latin America, Jesús Gracia; the chairman of Agencia EFE, José Antonio Vera; the Ombudsperson, Soledad Becerril, and the chairman of the Villar Mir Group, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, as well as representatives of the cultural, political, business and diplomatic fields.