An Article in ABC

Rocío Dávila Álvarez, Restorer, 1974-2015

I studied restoration because I saw an article in the newspaper, “ABC”, about some people who were restoring a series of ancient mosaics at the Archaeological Restoration School. After reading that article I told my father that that was what I wanted to do. So I went to Restoration School and, instead of taking Archaeology, which isn’t what I’m really interested in, we both took painting [with Mayte Dávila].
We were the first female students at Restoration School, together with a boy who came from Bolivia, Pedro Querejazu. We were just three students, and then there were people from the Restoration School itself who also attended classes. In addition to working, they also studied Restoration. It was a very small school, but the teachers were excellent, because we had don Diego Angulo, who came from time to time, and don Fernando Labrada, who was also an academic; they came to see how the School was going. Then there were people like Alfonso Pérez Sánchez and Matías Díaz Padrón, who was also at the Museo del Prado for many years. José Maria Cabrera was the one who provided the impetus for the whole thing.
So we came to the Casón to study restoration. I’d actually always liked painting, but I had the idea to study it because of the article in “ABC”.