Voces del Prado

It’s the people that make this work

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

We’ve been very lucky; or maybe it hasn’t just been luck and that we knew how to do it. The people that have joined (Marta Arriero, Eva Cardedal, Joaquín Arteaga) are outstanding, really hard working and committed. We’ve also made the right choices with the maintenance staff who have joined. The choice of people for the teams working with us (Marta, Eva, Joaquín and me) has produced fantastic results.
There was a moment when the accounts department and Miguel Vidal started thinking about contracting the maintenance out, but I think I persuaded them not to. They always opted for external maintenance, saying “Why don’t we contract this out?”. My answer was: “You don’t know what you’ve got here; this museum works and is the way it is because we’ve got these people.” And I said: “What state was the office building in when we first took it over? A complete mess. The only way of ensuring that this works is not changing the maintenance company every year or two, we can’t do that. We have to use the same staff and keep up the standard that doesn’t exist in any other museum.” I think what we’ve got here (in-house staff) doesn’t exist in any other museum: they’re all outside companies. We’ve got a workforce that we’ve kept. Undoubtedly, the Museum has grown...well, we’ve got the same number of people that we had when I arrived, not one more. So, in the end we convinced them. We’ve been able to carry on the same and for many years. And keeping the team on is showing results.