• The winner, Clara Bejarano Pellicer, analysed the music profession in 16th and 17th century Seville.
• The thesis entitled, "The music and musicians in Seville of the Hapsburgs" contributes to our understanding of a little studied area in modern historiography.

Seville, 23 December 2011.- Clara Bejarano Pellicer has been awarded the 2011 Prize for best doctoral thesis on a theme related to Seville for her study entitled, The music and musicians in Seville of the Hapsburgs. The award, which has been presented by the Focus-Abengoa Foundation since 1983, is endowed with a financial award of 3,000 Euros, and the work may also published if requested by the Foundation's trustees, in order to promote it and to generate as much social recognition as possible.

The jury for the award, chaired by Santiago Grisolía, the executive president of the Rey Jaime I awards and a trustee of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, highlighted "the originality and value of the sources used; a series of first hand documents full of Sevillian notary protocols, which have enabled a better definition of the musical profession in 16th and 17th century Seville". The jury also recognised Clara Bejarano Pellicer's ability to demonstrate "the social function and uses of music and the people that played it in Sevillian society of the Early Modern Age, as another cultural object that is a fundamental factor in better understanding the imagined mind-set and cultural representations associated with the daily sounds of the urban world - parameters that, in every sense interact in the shared spiritual life of a society belonging to one of the major European cities in the 16th and 17h centuries".

Through her work, Clara Bejarano Pellicer offers a new and original perspective within the historiography of the modern age of the music profession in Seville, which to date had been poorly studied. Her research is therefore highly commendable and extremely worthy of the top award in this new edition of the Prize for the best doctoral thesis.

Appointed by the trustees of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, the jury of the 28th edition was chaired by Santiago Grisolía, executive president of the Rey Jaime I awards and a trustee of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, and comprised José Enrique Ayarra Jarne, professor of organ studies and resident organist of Seville cathedral and the Hospital de los Venerables; Antonio Miguel Bernal Rodríguez, professor of the School of Economic Institutions and History of the University of Seville; Juan Antonio Carillo Salcedo, Vice-president of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, jurist in international law and a member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; José Domínguez Abascal, General Technical Secretary of Abengoa and a professor at the College of Engineers of the University of Seville; Carlos Alberto González Sánchez, professor of Modern History at the University of Seville; Alfredo J. Morales Martínez, professor of Art History at the University of Seville; Alfonso Pleguezuelo, professor of the Department of History of Fine Arts at the University of Seville; Ramón Queiro, professor of the Department of Urban and Territorial Planning at the College of Architecture at the University of Seville; Rogelio Reyes Cano, professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Seville, and Jaime Rodríguez Sacristán, professor of Child Psychiatry at the University of Seville.

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation awards this prize to strengthen its commitment to the training of individuals as part of its on-going work to promote study, to support research and to recognise activities that are associated with these fields. Furthermore, the Foundation's cultural priorities include the recovery of Seville's musical heritage, especially from the Golden Age, which is exemplified by the organ of the Los Venerables church.

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation was created in 1982 as a result of the cultural work begun in 1972 by Abengoa with the publication of the works Temas Sevillanos (Themes of Seville) and Iconografía de Sevilla (Iconography of Seville). A collection of documents, books and engravings on the Kingdom of Seville and by Sevillian authors was created during the same period. This initial cultural work showed Abengoa's directors the importance of the company's involvement in activities that directly benefit society, beyond its core technology-based work, and this led to the creation of the Seville Cultural Fund Foundation. The Hospital de los Venerables, a 17th century monument and the headquarters of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation in Seville, has housed the Diego Velázquez Research Centre, a leading institution for studying and disseminating the Baroque era and the Sevillian period of this universally renowned artist, following the acquisition of Velázquez's Santa Rufina by the Foundation in 2007.