Voces del Prado

State Exams in Another Age

Francisco Manso Guerrero, Gallery attendant and Clerical Support, 1966-1991

All of us who joined the Museum were State employees in the Corps of Junior Officials, but we were only temporary employees. Later there were State exams you had to pass to become permanent members of staff. I remember that there were around fifteen positions available. We all went for it and we all passed. We were examined, amongst others, by the Museum Director, who was Don Diego Angulo at the time. I remember that they examined us in the library located in the Villanueva Building, and there sat don Diego Angulo and a man I didn’t know, who was very serious and demanded considerable respect. They sat there and asked us questions, whatever they thought appropriate. But we weren’t very highly qualified; we were just people who had come to work there. In order to enter the examination process we had to present our primary school certificate, which I didn’t have. But I went to calle Amaniel and they gave it to me there. And the same happened to all the others. I remember that I wasn´t one of the worst performers in the exam. There were moments when you just had to laugh, because there sitting at the table were Don Diego Angulo and two or three other people asking you things. I think they asked me about Goya and about when the Museo del Prado opened. We’d prepared those questions, because they’d told us to prepare them. And we were all there and we knew who’d done it well and who’d done badly. There were some who really didn’t know anything. One of them was asked where Majorca was and he replied “well, sir, it’s where newly-weds go”. And we all laughed.