Natalia Mateo Ripoll and Juan José Oña Fernández, winners of the latest edition of the Spain-Ireland Awards of the Aula María Zambrano de Estudios Transatlánticos

The Spain-Ireland Awards of the María Zambrano Transatlantic Studies Department of the University of Malaga, which forms part of the FGUMA-UMA Centre for Ibero-American and Transatlantic Studies (CEIT), have decided on the winner of their latest edition.  

The prize has been awarded to the work ‘The influence of the Great (Invincible) Armada on contemporary Spanish-Irish relations (XX-XXI centuries’, written by the researcher Natalia Mateo Ripoll and the researcher Juan José Oña Fernández. The prize will be awarded in 2025.  

The evaluation committee chaired by the director of CEIT, Juan Antonio García Galindo, stressed that ‘the work presented by these authors emphasises Ireland's relations with Spain through such an important historical event as the Invincible Armada, a milestone that has remained throughout time in the memory of both the Spanish and the Irish’.  

Likewise, the committee has positively valued ‘the access and consultation of numerous personal and documentary sources that enrich the research presented’. 

History of the Spain-Ireland Awards of the María Zambrano Hall of Transatlantic Studies

The Spain-Ireland International Research Awards were launched in 2018 thanks to the support of the patron José Antonio Sierra, founder of the Spanish Cultural Institute in Dublin, with the aim of encouraging research and awakening interest in the relations between the two countries in any academic and scientific discipline. Between 2018 and 2023, a total of five editions have been developed in which different modalities have been established, such as the George Campbell Award, the Kate O'Brien Award and the Robert Boyd Award, all of them included in the Spain-Ireland Awards.

In the 2018-2019 edition, the work ‘Irish Writers in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s; Pearse Hutchinson and Aidan Higgins’ by Verónica Membrive, lecturer and researcher in the Department of Philology at the University of Almería, was highlighted. In the next edition corresponding to 2019-2020, the University of Málaga researchers Lorena Arce Romeral and Miriam Seghiri Domínguez were awarded for their work ‘Generation of writing and translation templates (English-Spanish) for home purchase contracts: a study applied to Spain and Ireland’ and an accesit was awarded to Martha Gutiérrez-Steim-Kamp for ‘Relations- Ireland and Spain 1965 to present. Am illustrated journey’.

In 2020-2021, the winner was Pilar Iglesias Aparicio, PhD in Philology, for ‘The Magdalene Laundries in Ireland and the centres of the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer in Spain: examples of sexual policy of repression and punishment of women’.  

In the 2021-2022 edition, the award went to the works ‘Transatlantic women who rebel to the mainland in “men's times’, by Víctor Calderón Fajardo, from the University of Málaga, and ‘Land of promise. The Costello family and the Irish Diaspora. Genealogy, Globalisation and Atlantic Trade in 18th century Andalusia’, by Salvador David Pérez González, also from the University of Málaga, in the Kate O'Brien Prize and Robert Boyd Prize categories, respectively. A runner-up prize was also awarded to ‘The Legacy of Eavan Boland in Ireland and Beyond: A Literary and Personal Approach’, by Pilar Villar Argáiz of the University of Granada.