Ignacio Galán: ‘With our awards we are generating shared enthusiasm that makes many people happy’

Iberdrola held today at its headquarters in Madrid the fifth Iberdrola Supera Awards, with which it seeks to highlight projects and initiatives that represent and promote women's sport and equality through sport. This is a special award ceremony, as it set a record number of entries with more than 1,300 candidates, compared to more than 900 in 2023. In total, since its first edition in 2020, the Iberdrola Supera Awards have received nearly 4,000 nominations.

The Executive Chairman of the Iberdrola Group, Ignacio Galán, presented the awards, divided into six categories (Supera Base, Supera Competition, Supera Social, Supera Dissemination, Supera Inclusion and Supera Rural) and endowed with €50,000 each to Club M-Urban, The 3x3 Academy, Fundación Segunda Parte, Visibilitas.com, Aloka Surf and Escola Judo Club. 

Alexia Putellas, Carolina Marín, Teresa Perales, Susana Rodríguez, Sandra Sánchez, Adiaratou Iglesias, Ona Carbonell, María Pérez and Irene Paredes, Iberdrola Ambassadors, accompanied the president in congratulating the award winners during a gala hosted by the presenter and comedian Ana Morgade and attended by more than 30 Iberdrola España ambassadors, sportswomen who, through their achievements, values and personal hard work, have become community role models.

The President of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), Alejandro Blanco, the Chairman of the Higher Council of Sports (CSD), José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, and the President of the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE), Alberto Durán Lopez, also attended the event.

With the presentation of these awards, Iberdrola wants to contribute to making the projects and growth of all the candidates a reality. The Supera Base Award went to the M-Urban Club's initiative 'Adelante, Patina', which seeks to promote women's youth sports in speed skating. The Supera Competition recognised the efforts of the sports association The 3 x 3 Academy, for creating role models in women's 3 x 3 basketball and promoting the practice of this Olympic discipline, while the Supera Social highlighted the work of the Fundación Segunda Parte for promoting sports programmes aimed at promoting the recovery of women with after-affects linked to stroke.

For its part, the Supera Difusión award highlighted the importance of the coverage that the digital newspaper Visibilitas.com gives to women's sports disciplines news, while the Supera Inclusión award recognised the work of the company Aloka Surf to ensure that people, whatever their physical or mental condition, can enjoy surfing. 

Finally, Supera Rural, created this year to recognise in a singular way activities that promote sport among girls or women in municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants, praised the Escola Judo Club project, to create and implement judo schools in those localities in which more problems have been detected in teaching and practising this type of sport.

This was the decision of the Jury of Honour, made up of sport and media celebrities: Vicente del Bosque, Sandra Sánchez, Carolina Marín, Teresa Perales, Jesús Carballo, Marta Arce, Ona Carbonell, Eli Pinedo, Alexia Putellas, Susana Rodríguez, Lydia Valentín, Sonsoles Ónega, Susana Griso, Manu Carreño, Paloma del Río, Paco González and Fátima Iglesias. 

During the Iberdrola Supera Awards ceremony, Ignacio Galán highlighted how proud the company is to collaborate so that various communities can benefit from the hopes and projects of extraordinary people who want to improve the quality of life of their neighbours, with sport as a key to a more upstanding and egalitarian society.

‘This is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and endearing events that can be held throughout the year. For a company like ours, which does something as simple and at the same time as necessary as generating and distributing electricity, it is very special to see how, with our awards, we are generating shared enthusiasm that makes many people happy. It is also an honour to have the jury that makes up these awards and our ambassadors, who are essential so that all the girls in this country have female role models at the highest level’, she said.

Two decades of being a driving force for equality through women's sport

For Iberdrola, sport is one of the essential vehicles for equality. Since 2016, it has been the main promoter of sport practiced by women. It currently supports 35 national federations and gives its name to more than 160 competitions. Through its commitment, it has contributed to an increase of more than 80% in the number of members of these federations, to almost 820,000. 

The encouragement of the electricity company also extends to paralympic sport. Since its creation in 2005, it has worked with the Spanish Paralympic Committee's Paralympic Sports Support Plan with the aim of providing our athletes with the best conditions to carry out their preparation and successfully participate in all competitions.

In addition, Iberdrola, through its Foundation and together with the Spanish Paralympic Committee, provides paralympic athletes who are beneficiaries of the Paralympic Sports Support Plan with scholarships for university and postgraduate training. This collaboration agreement aims to facilitate the professional training of athletes with a view to their future integration into the job market once their sporting career is over.

The company is works with Universo Mujer, a 360º initiative for the development of women and their personal evolution within society, which was created to develop initiatives that contribute to social improvement and transformation through the values of all women's sport.