COMUNICACIÓN

The Regional Government of Extremadura and the board of trustees and staff of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation express their deepest condolences on the passing, at the age of 90, of Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former minister of Education and Science and former director-general of UNESCO. Mayor Zaragoza was also a member of the Academy of Yuste since 2008, when he was inducted into the Leonardo Da Vinci chair during the ceremony to deliver the Carlos V European Award to French lawyer and politician Simone Veil. (19/12/2024)

Born in Barcelona in 1934, Mayor Zaragoza held a doctorate in Pharmacy from the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a professor of Biochemistry and rector of the University of Granada. Among his many posts, he served as vice-president and acting president of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) from 1971 to 1973, co-founded and directed the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre in 1974, and was director-general of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999.

In Spain, he founded and chaired the Fundación para una Cultura de Paz (Foundation for a Culture of Peace) and held several political positions, including minister of Education and Science in 1981 and member of the European Parliament. In 2005, he was appointed co-chair of the High-Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations and, in 2010, was named president of the International Commission against the Death Penalty.

Regarding his involvement in the activities of Yuste Foundation, Federico Mayor Zaragoza attended the Carlos V European Award ceremonies when the award was delivered to Marcelino Oreja in 2017 and António Guterres in 2023. Additionally, he served as a jury member for the Carlos V European Award given to Jacques Delors in 1995 and to Wilfried Martens in 1998.

He also participated as a speaker in several editions of the Campus Yuste training programme, held at the Monastery of Yuste each July. Notably, he delivered the lecture “La defensa de la paz, los derechos humanos y la democracia en el actual sistema internacional” (The Defence of Peace, Human Rights, and Democracy in the Current International System) during the course “Conflict Resolution, Peace, Gender, and Development” in 2018. In 2019, he presented the conference “Los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible: una agenda pensando en la próxima generación” (The Sustainable Development Goals: An Agenda for the Next Generation) as part of the summer course entitled “Perspectives and Challenges of the 2030 Agenda: Equality, Sustainable Communities, and Strong Institutions for Development, Peace, and the Achievement of the SDGs”.

His connection with the Foundation also brought him to Guadalupe, where he participated as a speaker in the event “World Heritage Site. Exceptional Cultural, Historical and Architectural Values of the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe”, which was held in 2020.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza further contributed to the Foundation by writing articles for the Newsletter of the Academy of Yuste, focusing on Europe and humanism from 2019 to 2023.