Angara receives Spain's Casa Asia Award

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Edgardo Angara, a lawyer and former President of the University of the Philippines, was named one of two international recipients of Spain’s 7th Casa Asia Award. He is the first Southeast Asian to win the foreign policy prize, sharing it with the multi-disciplinary International Dunhuang Project (IDP) of China.

A ceremony honoring the recipients will take place in Madrid within the year.The senator is best known in Spain as the Filipino who paved the way for the establishment of June 30 of each year as Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day.

”Sen. Angara has been chosen to receive the award for his commitment to strengthen relations between Spain and the Philippines. He is one of the most distinguished Filipino politicians who have committed themselves to boost relations between the two nations as well as to promote Spanish language and culture. It was the initiative of Sen. Angara that paved the way for the establishment of Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day in 2002,” the Spanish embassy said.

The Casa Asia Award is bestowed by the institution of the same name and was set up in November 2001 as an integral part of Spain’s foreign policy, aimed at strengthening Spanish presence in the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century.

The embassy said the Award is granted yearly to individuals and institutions “that have stood out in the promotion of dialogue, understanding and knowledge between societies of Spain and the Asia-Pacific region.”

IDP was created in 1994 with the objective of making accessible to everyone, through the Internet, all information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artifacts from Dunhuang, China and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road as well as encouraging their use through educational and research programs.

According to Wikipedia, Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day remembers the day (late June 1898) when Gen.Emilio Aguinaldo, President of the First Philippine Republic, issued an order requiring that the last Spanish soldiers who had been garrisoned for almost a year inside Baler’s church be treated not as enemies, but as friends, and that they receive the necessary permission for their return to Spain.

A movie titled “Baler” was made of this incident.

Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day was established by Republic Act 9187 on July 22, 2002. The first celebration in 2003 in Baler had the theme “Amistad Duradera” or “Matibay na Pagkakaibigan” in Filipino.