Spanish think tank awards UFM founding president Manuel Ayau its Juan de Mariana Award for his exemplary lifework in the defense of liberty, on May 23 in Madrid.

For those who speak Spanish, Ayau’s speech is worth the watch, as he regales the audience with how the success of the Fabian Society inspired him to found a think tank in Guatemala in the 1950s and then a university in 1971. He included an anecdote told to him by Redvers Opie who accompanied a retinue of gurus from the Fabian Society to Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin had ordered his economists to come up with a socialist economic plan. They, in turn, cried for help to the Fabian Society, ground zero of the socialist ideal mongers. When the experts from England sat down at the table in Russia, Redvers told Muso, it was blind leading blind; no one had a clue what to do.

At the end of his speech, focusing on the present, Ayau describes his latest project: a popular movement to reform the constitution of Guatemala along Hayekian lines.

Ayau spoke of seeing himself forty years ago reflected in the institute’s president Gabriel Calzada; young, enthusiastic, passionate and committed to changing the world through ideas.

The Juan de Mariana Institute is named after one of the most prominent thinkers of the School of Salamanca, imprisoned at the beginning of the seventeenth century for his opposition to the Spanish king, Felipe III. Its website has both English and Spanish versions.

Labels: Guatemala, Spain