Voces del Prado

The 1960s. The Museum as a family

Francisco Martín Ortiz, Administrative Technician (copies), 1966-2015

Tomorrow, Friday, is my last day at the Prado. To choose any given day is very difficult. It's not a single date but many days brought together, a tremendous amount of time, meeting people, meeting Museum directors, people and colleagues that have disappeared, either through retirement or death … there are even times when going through a certain hall I can remember the colleagues who were here in the period when I first joined the Museum.
The Prado Museum, back in the sixties, was a family workplace, it was like a small town, a little village, where we all knew each other. You could walk through the different halls stopping to speak to people, they'd ask you how your family was doing, it was a very pleasant place. I remember one Calleja, a man who had been at the seminar studying to become a priest, but he was never ordained, a nice, very kind man. At the time I was 15 or 16, he used to tell jokes and generally made life very pleasant for me. Some of them were like parents or grandparents to the younger ones, they'd give us advice... they were truly good to us.
The thing is that everyone working then at the Prado were employed by the Prado Museum, whereas today many come through contractors. Not in those days—everyone was an employee of the Prado, the people at the sales office, the cleaning ladies, all of us were employees of the Museum.
Francisco Calvo Serraller was loved by all, especially the guards, they were really fond of him. The same goes for professor Angulo, I remember him in winter, with his grey coat and his hat. A very warm person and a great teacher. Altogether I have known eleven directors, including the current one.