Voces del Prado

Fernando Checa and the roof

Pedro Álvarez Moreno, Head of the Area of Works and Maintenance, 1994-2009

Fernando Checa’s problem was that he had to deal with the roof. There were quite a few complications. Fernández Ordóñez, the president of the Board of Trustees at that time, had a lot of say and was always very involved in this.
Sometimes the problems got exaggerated. Obviously, they existed because it was difficult to be working up there without anything at all happening. There were a few incidents. Fernando Checa got extremely worried, well, we all were. But Fernando Checa was the director and he had to be the one who worried the most about everything and in a way he was the one most affected by it. Any incident got blown up by the press; incidents that were obviously important but you’re there, taking risks, sometimes in a really difficult, complicated situation.
The protective roof covering was designed to avoid problems. The thing was that this covering, which was a marvel of engineering, was slow to move. Each supporting leg had its own motor and it moved, but very slowly. It had to be moved so that the cranes could move things. So, if a storm suddenly blew up, some time lapsed between the cranes moving away and the protective roof starting to move. As to water coming in, it was almost inevitable. So the covering didn’t entirely meet expectations. There were a few problems. But Fernando Checa was very much focused on the completion of the building, which is when Gustavo Torner arrived, who worked on those aspects on the invitation of Fernando Checa, obviously. This was the part that most interested Fernando Checa apart from his museological plan, which didn’t entirely come about in the end as Miguel Zugaza completely changed it.