Voces del Prado

A stunning incident

Nuria de Miguel Poch, General Secretary of the Friends of the Museo del Prado Foundation, 1989-What's on

When the numbers of the friends of the Prado Museum were still quite modest, around 3,000 or maybe 5,000, we invited the friends of the Prado to attend the inaugurations at the Museum. In other words, an exhibition was opened in the morning and we would open in the afternoon for the friends of the Prado Museum. I remember there was an exhibition dedicated to Goya, and I think the curator was Juan José Luna. We invited the friends and many of them came along. I remember that the entry was through the gate of Murillo, and there was a long queue to enter the exhibit. You had to walk up the stairs on the south of the Museum, where the gate of Murillo was located, and the stairs there are a bit complicated, it seems like you're going up one storey but they're actually three. Unfortunately, one of the friends of the Museum, a man with cardiac insufficiency, had a heart attack on those stairs and he died. It was tremendous, it was really hard to accept. We had to cut off the access, the priest came from the Jerónimos, then the judge had to come to authorize the removal of the body... It was tremendous but I must say that his family was present, and we did everything we could to help them, we accompanied them to the funeral home because they were in shock. The next day my father called me and said “Nuria, read the ABC.” So I read the newspaper and there was a letter to the director written by this family, who were very grateful for everything we had done to support them, to help them. They said their father was a great admirer of Goya, and the best way to die was in the halls dedicated to Goya. Being something so tremendous, somehow there was a happy end of sorts.