Voces del Prado

The legacy of great colleagues

Manuel Montero Eugenia, Head of the Art Handling Staff, 1986-What's on

The person I learned from was my boss José María Adeba. He was someone who worked really well. He was a hard-working person who organised himself well. A person who knew how to get his job done. I think he’s the one I learned most from. I’ve also learned a lot from Ángel, for example, because he often sets you a problem with a job, something that might not be usual, so you have to use your imagination a bit and work on a good idea that someone in the team suggests. That’s always been the case and I think that the fact that there’s a good atmosphere always makes the job turn out better. I’ve learned a lot from both José María Adeba and from Ángel Campos but also, for example, from Alfonso Pérez Sánchez and Manuela Mena. When I was on the Art Handlers team I only coincided with Pérez Sánchez as director for two years but I’ve been hanging rooms with Manuela Mena for many years. Almost the whole time, as when she hasn’t been deputy director she’s been curator of 18th-century painting. So for me they’re people who I have a lot of contact with and I have good memories of that. Montse Sabán as well, who’s someone who knew how to evaluate both the artistic side, when we substitute a work with the curators, and the personal side. She was the one who would say to a curator: “You want to put that painting here but have you realised how big it is and how much it weighs and they have to get it up the stairs as there’s no goods lift?” She was a linking element in a job that’s not easy and she cut down the work a lot because she was very aware of what was involved on both sides. I miss her a lot. For me, working in the Museo del Prado means everything professionally. I could say that I really love my job. I try to get better in everything I do. Obviously I’m not perfect, I’m far from being that, but I do try not just to do things well but to work hard. The day I’m not around in the job I would like to have left things better than when I arrived – which is in fact very difficult – but I would like that to be the case.