Manuel Fernández-Delgado Cerdá is known more for this last work than for design, although the truth is that he was introduced to this discipline very early, through window dressing. At the beginning of our conversation, Manuel explains to me that he was born into a large family of eleven siblings where culture, art and decoration were his way of life and support. Soon, his life changed, as his father died prematurely, in 1971, at the age of 51. As the eldest son, he put his architecture studies on hold and took over the family establishment, where he added an art gallery to the store, until it closed in 2022. Of his father’s legacy, he highlights “a tradition of good taste, people said”.

During the beginnings of “Chys”, Manuel was trained at the School of Applied Arts in Murcia, where he graduated in 1973. The following year, he began to teach interior design under the guidelines of the architect Juan Antonio Molina, a reference, “a teacher and a permanent light”. “My father taught me the Baroque and Juan Antonio taught me modernity and simplicity.”

According to Manuel, the Craft Centres project was “innovative and very intelligent”. Devised by the Minister of Economy, Industry and Commerce, Francisco Artés Calero, it consisted of creating a permanent showcase for the sale of handicrafts; a large exhibition space, where all artisans had the right to sell their products. Juan Antonio Molina understood this very well, as shown by his architectural designs for the centers of Lorca and Murcia, with different heights and bridges.

The architect Pedro Antonio San Martín Moro, author of the Cartagena Crafts Center, also understood it. The three centers still retain that same initial objective, although Manuel thinks that today craftsmanship needs to learn to combine tradition with novelty, without being forced. A difficult challenge!

At that stage and with a councillor receptive to innovations, two annual editions of the “National Design Conference” were held, with guests such as Rafael Marquina, Alberto Lievore, Jorge Pensi, América Sánchez, Alberto Corazón and Miguel Milá, among others. Likewise, for seven years in a row, the “International Meetings of Window Dressing, Interior Design and Commercial Design” took place. Then experts such as the window dresser Blay-Putch; businessman Enrique Loewe; Fernando Amat, director of Vinçon; the stylist Ramón Pujol and the graphic designer Pedro Rocha, from Lisbon. Parallel activities were organized, such as “Come to the Moon“, with the distribution of maps with the windows intervened by creative people.

Reflecting on the efforts to be made to get the public to go to museums, Manuel argues that it is easier in the Museum of Science and Water and in the Almudí Palace Center than in the Ramón Gaya Museum. There are many annual school visits to the Science Museum and the exhibitions – between 12 and 14 a year – that are programmed in the Almudí are also successful. The public of the Ramon Gaya Museum is smaller and the temporary exhibitions, by the museum’s own statute, have to be related to the artist.

It is very difficult to make the public repeat the visit to a museum to see the same thing, so many activities were designed: book presentations, prose readings and storytelling, even concerts. And the museum joined any activity in the city, such as “Shopping night” and “Museum Day“, closing the building and opening up to the square. “We took the exhibition to the street and all the performances were in the square.” During the eleven years under Manuel’s direction, the Ramón Gaya Museum offered nearly 1,000 activities.

He tells me that “one thing has failed Murcia, that the museums that have been built are small. The Archaeological Museum of Alicante, for example, occupies the entire old hospital, it is immense”. The same could have been achieved in the Artillery Barracks, but all the spaces there are small: the Párraga Center, the University Museum, the Sardineros group and the Library. The same thing has happened with the Old Prison. And the fact is that the authorities always say that it is a matter of budget, personnel and maintenance. And that we have to pay more attention to the street, that we have to take more care of it: its shops, signs, everything that is at eye level.

He recalls that design in Murcia had a high point in the times of José Manuel Garrido, when “El dibujador” (The Draftsman) appeared, made up of Severo Almansa, Vicente Martínez Gadea and Antonio Ballester, and others such as Ángel Fernández Saura, Marcos Salvador Romera and José Luis Montero, “an exceptional person in his work”.

That graphic design and publishing are at a very high level in Murcia, a city with many cultural activities as it has the programming of entities such as the Cajamurcia Foundation, the Mediterranean Foundation, the different museums, exhibition halls and public spaces, the city council and the autonomous community. This diversity favors the citizen. “You have to reach people and the way to reach them is through design. Design is the way.”