Voces del Prado

1979. The energy of a whole country

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

The advent of democracy really was a moment of change, a period of brutally dynamic transformation throughout the whole of Spain. It was just a moment, and there was a degree of enthusiasm of the like we have never seen again. It doesn’t exist now; and it didn’t exist afterwards either. That enthusiasm, that youth. I was around 29 or 30 years old and already working at the Museo del Prado, and at the age of thirty-one I became the Assistant Director of the Museum. Those of us who were that age at the time knew that we bore a very great responsibility on our shoulders: it was up to us to change the country, not just the Museum, but the whole country. And the Prado was changing thanks to people such as Xavier de Salas, who’d been there for a while but knew what had to be done; or Pita Andrade and Pérez Sánchez. When I joined the Museum, a cushion already existed, made up of a team of enormously valuable people, figures who were both well qualified and knowledgeable, professionals who had some tremendous international links. All of them were highly respected outside Spain. This was enough, even though there was no money for them, and there certainly was no money. But that was something that was important, truly fundamental, and it continues to be so in an institution such as this.