Voces del Prado

Renovation Works at the Casón: The Collections Are Stored Away Again

José Luis Díez García, Head of the Department of Conservation of 19th Century Painting, 1988-2013

The Casón del Buen Retiro was a really tricky building because it had no foundations. It was a huge dinosaur that sat on sandy soil that moved and under whose surface the drainage channels of the Gardens of El Buen Retiro flowed (and still flow today), coming out in the Abroñigal stream. This meant that we were faced with some extremely difficult problems.
In 1997, the restoration of the whole building was planned and commissioned, air-conditioning was to be put in and all the facilities were to be updated, so that once the renovation works were completed, the building would once again house the nineteenth century art collections. This led the Museum Director at the time, Fernando Checa, to include me in the working team that liaised with the Works Management Team at the Ministry of Culture. So in addition to managing the collection like any other of my colleagues, I also had to manage the complete restoration of the building. And we’re not talking about just painting the walls and putting in some new spotlights, but undertaking some tremendous renovation works at the Casón. I don’t have many fond memories of those years, because it was a very difficult time.
The fact that the collections were shut away also meant that we lost some visibility. We had made a huge effort with history painting and with Federico de Madrazo. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction and then we had to store the works away again, without knowing when we could bring them out.