The King defends the importance of "consolidating democratic coexistence and building bridges" between points of view

In a complex society "the key is to add, not to isolate oneself", he has argued

MADRID, 27 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

King Felipe VI has defended this Friday the importance of "consolidating democratic coexistence" and also of "building bridges" between distant points of view during the inauguration of the cultural space of the José Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón Foundation in Madrid.

With the enlargement, "a meeting place is opened in which something very important in these days is highlighted", said Don Felipe, "to consolidate democratic coexistence and build bridges between the most diverse, between the most distant points of view, always with a legitimate yearning for knowledge, with a firm will to create and with an irreversible link in the history of Ortega and Marañón".

The monarch has highlighted that the inauguration of the new space in what was once the old 'residence for young ladies' of María de Maeztu "occurs in a context of great importance".

"Contemporary society faces one of its most decisive challenges", said the King, "offering answers at a crossroads that comes under the sign of uncertainty, of constant changes, of unparalleled social dynamics".

These responses, he continued in his argument, "will come from adjusting a very delicate and well-known balance between tradition and modernity." According to the King, it has been this pairing that "has made civilization advance and has allowed progress to always have a referent, an intellectual anchor in the knowledge of what has already been accomplished."

Don Felipe has also had words of praise for both Ortega and Marañón and their "exceptional creative capacity" in their respective fields.

They both knew that "in a complex, creative society so full of contradictions and conflicts, the key is to add, not to isolate oneself, to open oneself up to other thoughts, to other interpretations of reality and to establish a fruitful dialogue with all those achievements, achievements, proposals, that its activity can generate", he added.

He has also praised the constant attention that the José Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón Foundation dedicates to "Spanish-speaking America", with which it has sought to "strengthen the ties that unite us" and "has revealed the appeal of a cultural collaboration, academic, intellectual on both sides of the Atlantic" in addition to working "for the projection of culture in Spanish" with offices in some of its capitals.

Thus, he has been convinced that the new cultural space "will allow the exercise of freedom, knowledge, research, criticism, intellectual curiosity, civilized debate, serene and constructive proposals".