Voces del Prado

The office building

Pedro Álvarez Moreno, Head of the Area of Works and Maintenance, 1994-2009

The office building came into being because we were a bit worried as we started on the roofing from the Goya entrance, moving by intersections. Murillo was the last part of the roofing that we did. We proceeded by: Goya, north galleries, apse, south galleries and Murillo. As Murillo reached completion, the displays started opening in it. When the central north gallery was finished, the central north gallery opened. When we reached the Velázquez apse and gallery, Velázquez opened, and so on.
The restoration studio was in the upper Murillo rooms. Obviously, all the restorers had to be moved and a temporary restoration studio was installed in rooms 40, 41, 42, 43 and 44. The director’s office was on the second Murillo floor, as were the curators, the Trustees’ boardroom and the library. Everything was there and they had to leave for the roof to be redone.
I don’t know how, but they got hold of the old Aldeasa building opposite, which also had to be updated so that everything could be moved into it. It was a really badly maintained building with an induction air conditioning system, an old fashioned system, fine at the time, and with a rotten old machine room. It was all awful. With half a million pesetas my team, the maintenance people, did an excellent job and left it up and running.
The management, which was based in a building on Claudio Coello, also moved into the office building. So did the director’s office and the building had to be rapidly adapted (the inauguration plaque is in the entrance) so that the second floor of the Murillo wing could be emptied in order to redo its roof. In other words, all this preceded the work on the roof.