Voces del Prado

My relationship with Diego Angulo

Felícitas Martínez Pozuelo, Administrative Technician, 1971-2018

I always had a very cordial relationship with him. I can’t say it was close, as this was Diego Angulo, but it was very pleasant. In the afternoons I often went to the Higher Research Council where he was honorary director. So we coincided there. When I left the Museum to go to the Council I sometimes met him in the car park. He would see me and wait for me to go with him. I always found that rather amazing as he was such a distinguished person: he was the director of the Academia de Historia among other things. I said to myself, “Don Diego’s waiting for me to catch up with him so I can go with him? Why are we going to the Council together?” It seemed to me incredible. I was 20 and he was the academician and director whom we all venerated, and at the same time I thought it was really nice that he was always so approachable. In the early 1980s he was completing his book on Murillo and he needed to get it to press and there were still some things to finish so he asked me if I could help him. I was delighted as I had already worked on some of the texts with him as I understood his handwriting. So I went to his house every afternoon for a couple of months to work there, typing the texts and other things. He was really kind to me about some things, things that when I tell them no one can believe them about him: he gave me books, something he didn’t do with anyone else. He didn’t give books away; on the contrary, he horded them. Although later they were generously donated.
I used to smoke and a packet of Ducados would appear on the table, which was the brand I smoked. When I went to get my packet from my bag I always thought in amazement, “Where’s this come from?” It was Don Diego who had bought me a packet of cigarettes. When I told that story no one believed it. Because he didn’t smoke, he never had, and he told me one day that his brother had died of lung cancer. He didn’t like anyone to smoke, but he did that for me. I’ve got all sorts of stories like that about Diego Angulo.