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What I did as soon as I arrived at the Museum, which I had already done on other occasions in other management positions, was go through the Museum with a notebook. By "going through the Museum" I mean that I want to know what is behind that little door behind the hatch that you have to crawl into. Everything that was tucked away beneath the carpet, anything that could be reviewed. I was accompanied by a few people and from that notebook came the first report of urgent things to be done.
I have visited the basements of all the American museums, and I've seen that museums have external warehouses. I came here with that idea and later the fact that there should be a warehouse outside the city was accepted as normal, with everything a museum should have but without taking up space here in the centre of Madrid. That's how it is set up in Washington and I saw how it worked. I brought that know-how here, I put it into practice starting from that first review with my notebook, which we used to prepare two documents that I think were essential.
Professor of Archaeology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Director of the Museo del Prado and the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Managing Director of the Bellas Artes y Archivos and permanent member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
Interview recorded on June 13, 2018
