It has always been there. Between the walls of old stately homes and palaces, along the narrow and formerly dark and dirty streets that nurture the dreams of the empire, curing impossible evils in the past with the exercise of faith and occasionally, very occasionally, reason. Sustaining a timid breeze of progress during the long years of Spain’s social and political decline in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, watchful of the splendour of the first regional industrialisation and the opening of factories in Valladolid. The University of Valladolid has always been there, sometimes liberal and reformist, thanks to the momentum of the many lecturers, politicians or ministers that have been educated within its walls. With its capacity for social presence and influence, given the almost endless list of eminent researchers, writers and politicians that have graced its lecture theatres: Francisco de Quevedo, José Zorrilla, Mariano José de Larra, Miguel Delibes, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Angel de los Ríos, Matías Sangrador, León Felipe, Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, Pío del Río Hortega, Manuel Belgrano, Argentine politician and soldier, Claudio Moyano or César Silió...

Of this secular history, laden with darkness and light, not only is there the documentation of the archives and the unwritten tradition, anchored in the memories of the thousands of lecturers and students educated in its classrooms but also old ceremonies and the echoes, in Latin, of the old University of Valladolid, where wisdom built its home. Scores of doctors who swore honorem, reuerentiam, commoda, libertatem et praeminentias huius almae Vniuersitatis, pro uribus, quoad uita mihi comes fuerit, procurare ac defendere, and old masters trained in its classrooms or incorporated into its cloister, whose fine teaching is forever linked to the University of Valladolid.

Ceremonies that now recall former ceremonies, when being awarded the degree of Doctor was a solemn urban event which dignified the city and made it possible for the university to perform a social representation, dressed in a ritual and scenography that preceded, after the academic exercises and required oaths, the bestowing of the peculiar symbols of doctors: mortarboard (signun coronae et excellentiae doctoralis dignitatis) and tassel: red for Law, green for Canons, white for Theology, yellow for Medicine, blue for Arts. The doctor was also awarded the gold ring and book of science ut intellegas quod studere et legere et profiteri debeas.

This ritual has remained with us, but is reserved now only for the doctorate Honoris Causa at the university. The merits that endorse this recognition best reflect the dynamism and excellence with which the University of Valladolid wishes to underline its everyday work. Presided over by HM Queen Sofía, many Doctors Honoris Causa now occupy the old walls of Santa Cruz Palace, highlighted in capital letters and decorated with the Victor recognising their excellence. Great writers, Nobel prize winners, illustrious researchers in the more avant garde fields of science, doctors, historians, diplomats, presidents of the Royal Academy of Language or economists, among others, swore ... curare, quoquis modo, publice vel occulte, honorem et utilitatem dictae Vniuersitatis, eiusdem Doctorarum Magistrorumque, praesentium, absentium et futurorum; and this generous oath is preserved as a sign of honour for the eight-hundred year old Alma Mater of Valladolid.