Por Redaccion Avilés hosts the ceremony for the award of the Republican Distinction 2025 to Carmen Negrín, granddaughter of Juan Negrín
10 Apr. 2025
The Valdecarzana Palace will host this Saturday, April 12, starting at 12:30 p.m., the ceremony for the award of the Republican Distinction 2025 to Carmen Negrín, granddaughter of Juan Negrín, who was a scientist and president of the Government during the Second Republic. The event, organized by the Republican Athenaeum of Asturias (ARA), will have the participation of the Councilor for Democratic Memory, Ana Solís, as well as the Deputy Minister of Citizen Rights of the Principality of Asturias, Beatriz González Prieto.
The Republican Distinction is an award that the Republican Athenaeum of Asturias has been granting annually since 2020 to prominent figures in the defense of Democratic Memory and republican values.
«It is necessary to recognize the work of individuals like Carmen Negrín, who work to keep republican ideas alive. Her perseverance and strong principles are an example for those of us who continue to defend, now more than ever, the values of democratic humanism and social progress,» states the Councilor for Democratic Memory, Ana Solís.
The councilor highlights Carmen Negrín’s work in preserving and disseminating the legacy of the Second Republic that Juan Negrín presided over between 1937 and 1939: «We will never allow our history to be forgotten or, even worse, falsified and distorted by those who want to return us to darkness. We must redouble our efforts so that present society engages in a memory exercise and does not fall into the trap of new totalitarianisms.»
About Carmen Negrín
Carmen Negrín Fetter is a historian and writer. She was born in New Jersey (United States) where her father, Rómulo, a pilot in the Republican Aviation during the Civil War, lived before the family definitively exiled to Mexico. From Mexico, at the age of three, she moved to Paris with her brother Juan and lived there with her grandfather until his passing in 1956. In 1960, she returned to Mexico with her father. At the University of Berkeley (California), she obtained a degree in Comparative Literature and a minor in Linguistics and Political Sciences.
Upon her return to France in 1969, she resumed her studies and earned a degree in French Literature from the Sorbonne. She began a Master’s in Education Sciences at René Descartes, which she interrupted when offered a job at UNESCO, where she worked for 30 years, until her retirement, holding high positions. She started in the Office of the Director-General (collaborating with three Directors-General, including Federico Mayor Zaragoza).
She also worked with the Autonomous Palestinian Territories after the Oslo Accords, on the Encounter of Two Worlds and the International Year of Youth, and eventually became responsible for the World Heritage of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Currently residing in Paris, she is the honorary president of the Juan Negrín Foundation, where, as the executor of her grandfather’s will, she manages the valuable archives of the Ministries of Finance, War, and the Presidency of the Government of the Spanish Republic. These archives, in digital copy, were handed over to the Documentary Center of Historical Memory (CDMH) in Salamanca, which is also part of the Spanish Archives Portal (Pares), the Ministry’s digital platform for disseminating Spanish documentary heritage.
FUENTE