"At home they didn't think I would do engineering, we were told to go there for another year, I didn't pay attention."

Maria Dolors Díaz Fortuny is a member of CETIT, one of the first women engineers in our school

Why did you study engineering?

I was a bachelor of science at the high school in Tarragona. I hadn’t paid much attention to chemistry. I studied chemistry all summer, then I was in fifth grade and missing a course for sixth. I was beginning to feel that in Tarragona a lot of chemistry would go up due to the installation of the refinery or what, I don't remember very well, or the industry around La Canonja. Together with a friend we said "we can do chemistry" or some not very long studies without making a price (pre-university). We got excited and saw that what was called appraisal that from a year onwards would be called technical engineering. We went from expert to engineers and it sounded good.

We finished sixth and the nearest studios were in Vilanova, Barcelona and Terrassa. We said Barcelona badly if we had to leave Tarragona so we did. First partner was Maria Paz Gracia Ferrer and I the first two, it took more months to be more girls. They paid homage to us 25 years ago more than 50 years ago.

What was it like to study in Barcelona?

In Barcelona there were also many girls in the Industrial School, the old school of doctoral engineers and they left room for us. Many engineering specialties were taught there. First expertise and from a year we started 64 or 65 this degree came out in the rest of the centers. In mechanical or electrical there was no girl. In chemistry we ended up being quite girls There we lived well and in the studies of chemistry I was especially struck by the laboratory there was a lot of camaraderie.

This school was of the Diputación was not official of the whole nation and we had to do double graduation own school and another official title. A representative came and asked us to do a project, I accidentally took an oil cracker, I was very informed.

I finally graduated from the lab and analyzed industrial water from companies. I collected water in industries and gradually I did more studies focused on pedagogy and taking classes.

From chemistry proper I did just lab and then focus teaching. I went to school called work mb a teacher, Muntaner, did the first lab at work school. He was doing chemical chemistry classes and Enric de la Salut came and together he and I took the laboratory and went on to give evening classes to chemical companies providing elderly people without a degree and doing laboratory internships.

That was more than 50 years ago and you could hardly reconcile it with family life. The fast-paced chemistry was throwing so hard I couldn’t keep up with that pace and finally I gave up.

As for the point of view of collegiality until retirement I have taken different music courses, art wine sessions or trips. One of them was quite spectacular in Russia when it was not "democratic." We had arranged visits to Moscow and Leningrad was called then. In Moscow we did not do any of them, we only found impediments and they were all annulled from the Supreme Soviet. Very sound.

Where did you develop your career?

In the private company in the polygon and then in the school of work today it is called FP has varied a lot and improved a lot.

What did they tell him at home?

  They didn't believe it. You mean, like, saltines and their ilk, eh? I'm talking about being 16 years old and from Tarragona I drove to Barcelona where the atmosphere changes, they told me one more year and you'll make it more mature, I didn't pay attention.