Voces del Prado

The perfect job

María Teresa González Escolar, General Services Assistant, 1990-2013

I studied Fine Arts but also Teaching; when I was still very young I started with little ones and got as far as teaching the University Orientation Course. I didn’t mind teaching but I realised that I needed something that nourished me as teaching’s a job that burns you out, like being a nurse or a doctor. It’s all giving, but if you aren’t nourished yourself you burn out. I wanted to be able to get home after class and have my own thing, my private world, which was painting. Painting’s an interior thing whereas teaching is directed outwards. Also, when I was painting I felt like one more person doing it as a hobby and I wanted more professionalism. So for both those reasons I studied Fine Arts, and being with Jesús I also wanted a job that allowed me to paint, as teaching allowed me to paint when I got home. But by working at the Museum the idea was that we could both work and then we’d still have free time. So it was the perfect job. At the time Jesús first started it was three or four hours a day at the Prado; you earned very little but you had a lot of free hours. That was the idea.