Voces del Prado

The key to success

Carlos Zurita Delgado. Duke of Soria, Chairman of the Friends of the Museo del Prado Foundation, 1988-Up to date

Perhaps it’s the day-to-day work. This is of course carried out by the Secretary General, who in our case is Nuria de Miguel, who has been absolutely fundamental and important. She and all the people who work on the everyday running of the Fundación and I believe that the key difference between the situation which we initially encountered, which was very limited, and the present one lies in the decision to try and attract companies rather than just individuals, the “one-to-one”, which is a slower and much more complicated task. We needed to reach institutions so we planned how to reach, for example, academic corporations, such as the colleges of Lawyers, Doctors and Pharmacists, and this meant that a lot more people joined and also ones of a particular cultural level. I’m not being elitist: I think anyone with any cultural level can visit the Prado and enjoy it enormously, but this has ensured a specific university-level education which has been extremely positive and has allowed us to increase our membership to the more than 36,000 that we have today. This is certainly not something one achieves from one day to the next, it’s an ongoing effort, day after day, and I think that the key point has been sustaining that effort.