Txema Rodríguez, Mingote Award winner: "The honesty of an image can bring hope to those who need it."

Your Majesties, authorities, friends…

Many years ago, I gave up almost everything for photography . Those were difficult times. Back then, I was a man living with his two daughters, Inés and Lucía, in an old, borrowed apartment with no doors and a broken water heater. The three of us slept on a mattress on the floor . One of those mornings, the eldest daughter told me when she woke up that I had to stay calm because that night she had dreamed that one day I would be given a very important award .

And the truth is, here we are now, watching that childhood dream become a reality. And, incidentally, so do my parents, who, wherever they are right now, are seeing me dressed properly for the first time.

Photography is my voice, and it took me a while to find it. Each of us follows a path, I'd like to believe, and tries to put our love into what makes us feel alive. My conviction comes with the good fortune of being able to live through many experiences. One of them, unfortunately, was the floods in Valencia that you all know about. It took the lives of 228 people and left thousands more without homes, businesses, and services. It also deprived them of their memories, their refuge, and their privacy.

Many of us worked in that sea of ​​mud and destruction . I say this in the plural because I must share this recognition of my personal work with all my colleagues, those at the newspaper Las Provincias and those from other print, television, and radio media. Together, we did what we could, to the limit of our strength , to report what was happening. We walked through the mud in isolation, we walked over mountains of cars, and we provided comfort and support to those who didn't have it. We did our job, like so many other thousands who came to lend a hand.

It comforts me to think about the transformative power of journalism, especially that which is born and lives close to its people. It consoles me, in these times of moral decay, to know that the honesty of an image or a phrase can bring hope to those who need it, can fulfill our goal of shedding light on the invisible.

The day after the award decision was announced, Amparo, the mother of Joel, the boy in the photograph for which I'm giving this speech today, wrote to me. She wanted to congratulate me. And she said, and I quote: "Thank you for bringing visibility to our lives during those days when families had to cope without the help of those who, in theory, were supposed to help us. Only volunteers and good people like you were there, giving us the opportunity for everyone to see the situation. A big hug. I'll show the news to Joel; he'll be happy."

I must confess that I have rarely felt so important.

Thank you so much.