Voces del Prado

1978-1981. Don José Manuel Pita Andrade

Manuela Mena Marqués, Head of the Department of Conservation of 18th Century Painting and Goya, 1978-2019

After Salas came Don José Manuel Pita Andrade, who was a very interesting person. He was highly academic, just like a university professor, but he also felt a strong admiration for the Prado. He’d been here when he was younger, the kind of thing you did in those days. And I really liked Pita Andrade. I recall a trip we took together by plane to Japan in which he began to talk to me about things that were completely unheard-of for a Museum Director, since you’d expect him to just drone on about paintings. But no, he told me about how aeroplanes were handled at airports, about how long a plane could remain on the ground; which is to say, things that I’d never really thought about, although I’ve thought about them since then. He was also tremendously honourable, a man of strong ideas, a truly pre-war, pre-Republic figure. This was also a lesson and a good thing for the Museum. He paid for the stamps on the letters he sent to people out of his own pocket, because there wasn’t any money. That’s what he did, and that teaches you that you shouldn’t ask for things from the Museum; you should simply give. Just like that.