Iñaki Gabilondo wins the Tomas y Valiente Prize for lifetime achievement

The journalist Iñaki Gabilondo received the 8^th annual Tomas y Valiente Prize this Wednesday in Fuenlabrada "for his commitment to democracy and the rights that sustain it". The award was handed out by the Italian writer Roberto Saviano (last year’s winner). The Basque journalist stated that one could not remain "impassive" when faced with how “democracy is manhandled and disdained”.

For Gabilondo it is "a disgraceful fact" that in less than 30 years "we have gone from dreaming and building democracy, to disdaining it. To underselling democracy, to misusing it and considering it ineffective tool, as an old relic that serves no purpose in these times."

The former director of the Cadena SER radio program, Hoy por Hoy, lamented that though young people today recognise democracy "as a real framework, they don’t question it, they no longer see it as a vital force. It’s as if its heart had stopped beating. They look at the parties and turn their backs on them because they think that the parties have turned their backs on them

He also claimed that that the present is an age of scepticism, and that he is as guilty as the next, but that "we cannot allow this manhandling of democracy, we can’t just say that democracy isn’t what it used to be, a mere play thing of the big financial markets."