The City Council of San Fernando (Cádiz) has decided to honor the training ship Juan Sebastián Elcano with the Cortes de La Real Isla de León Award, an award that is given annually and that on this occasion arrives on the eve of the ship's centenary, which will be celebrated in 2027.
During an event held at the Navantia facilities, the mayor of San Fernando, Patricia Cavada, emphasized that Elcano is "an ambassador of the values that our country represents," citing among them the values of "coexistence, peace, and democracy."
The mayor recalled that the training ship of the Navy is "a symbol of Spain, but also of San Fernando and all its neighbors," and pointed out that with this recognition "we forever unite the past, the present, but above all, the future of our city with the Elcano."
Cavada linked the award to the commemoration that the city celebrates every September 24, in which tribute is paid to institutions and people who "are capable of continuing to defend constitutional values, of continuing, with their action from different fields, to highlight everything that the Constitution of 1812 represented." Therefore, on the eve of the ship's centenary, she insisted on the importance of honoring "one of the greatest ambassadors that Spain can have of constitutional values around the world."
The mayor also emphasized the "close" relationship of Elcano with San Fernando, noting that for "100 years" it has entered the Navantia shipyards in the city to "be prepared and return to the sea to defend those values."
"We feel very honored to hold this first act of the centenary commemoration, which is not the only one we are going to celebrate in San Fernando, and we feel honored that this recognition has been so well received by the Navy and by the commander," added the municipal official.
The Cortes de la Real Isla de León Award was created to recognize individuals, entities, and institutions that have made outstanding contributions to democratic life and the protection of rights.
Since it began to be awarded in 2002, the emeritus king Juan Carlos I, the fathers of the Constitution of 1978 (2004), the cities of Cádiz (2006) and Madrid (2008), the five Ibero-American countries that celebrated in 2010 the bicentennial of their independence (2010), the European Parliament (2012), Adolfo Suárez posthumously (2014), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (2016), the journalist Pepa Bueno (2018), the Academy of Arts and Cinematographic Sciences of Spain (2020), the Armed Forces (2022), the Spanish Olympic Committee (2023), the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo (2024), and Joan Manuel Serrat (2025) have received this award.