Museums managed by the Ministry of Culture have not returned to pre-pandemic figures

The National Archaeological Museum had the most visits. There you can see the lady of Elxe. / JJ Guillén / EFE

Among the sixteen, they had 2,351,887 visitors last year, less than El Prado or Reina Sofia alone.

Wednesday, January 4, 2023, 3:07 p.m

The State Museums under the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports had a total of 2,351,887 visits in 2022, which is a 42.5% increase compared to 2021, when they had 1,650,033 visitors. Although the growth has been 700,000 visitors, they have not yet reached the pre-pandemic numbers.

There are 83 museums attached to this ministry, but the data belongs to the 16 that directly manage them, since the management of most of the rest belongs to the autonomous communities where they are located. On the other hand, El Prado, which had 2,427,718 visitors in 2022, has a special character because it is public, and the same is true of the Reina Sofia museums, which are an autonomous institution and which had more than 3 million visitors.

As explained by the Ministry of Culture, the figures for these 16 museums that it directly manages represent a “clear step forward in recovering” the crowds registered before the COVID pandemic, but these figures have not yet been obtained globally (2,905,337 visitors in 2019, according to data collected by Europa Press).

In any case, a positive balance, compared to the previous year, has been registered in all State museums. In terms of museums, the National Museum of Archeology has had the most visitors (455,909 visits), followed by the Altamira Museum (251,424 visitors in 2022) and the Sorolla Museum (246,219 visitors).

The National Museum and Research Center of Altamira (Santillana del Mar, Cantabria), which has seen an increase of over 90% compared to 2021, and the ‘González Martí’ National Museum of Ceramics and Sanctuary Arts in Valencia (79% increase) are noteworthy.

The biggest increase was recorded in the Costume Museum (382%); in fact, in 2022, the museum has been able to provide service throughout the year, after reopening to the public in October 2021. In addition, two museums — the National Museum of Decorative Arts (Madrid) and the National Museum of Romanticism (Madrid) — have improved data compared to those obtained in 2019, before the pandemic.