Rosa Pich-Aguilera Roca, is the mother of 18 children, author of the successful book "How to be happy with 1,2,3 ... children", passionate about "Life", the family, her Faith, and also fashion . With her husband, who passed away just a year ago, she has traveled the world giving conferences and supporting families and parents in the education of their children. She opens the doors of her home and her heart to us in a warm and sincere interview that we share with you here.
The day is gray and rainy in Barcelona. We rang the bell at his house and, after identifying ourselves, we heard his voice: "go up, I'm up in the guard." An open-door house ushers us into a warm and inviting makeshift office on the rooftop terrace. Classical music plays in the background and hundreds of memories flock to the walls with bits of history lived with intensity. Family photos, memories of trips around the world, children's drawings, framed newspaper clippings, covers of Rosa's book in Korean, English ... And, in between, a huge smile that welcomes us. The sensation is of "warmth in the soul" and the gray of the day fills with colors as Rosa slowly and recklessly sheds her life before us.
The first thing one says when talking about Rosa Pich is: "The woman who had eighteen children."
What do you think is what defines you? What does Rosa Pich say if she has to say "who am I"?
R. I am an optimistic person, in love with the family, "enjoy", we could say. And that's why I wrote the book. Because I believed that I had a treasure, from what had lived in my family of sixteen brothers, and the one that with my husband we had lived in the family that we had formed, with eighteen children. And I understand that the treasure is not for me alone, but to transmit to the whole world, as in fact it has been done, the book has been translated into fifteen languages. How to be happy with one, two, three children ... you, at home, with your tall, short, fat, skinny, serious, smiling husband, each in his own situation.
Sometimes we are wrong and we want to find happiness in the trip that I am going to make after five years of saving. When I win the lottery that day I will be happy. And we do not realize that happiness is within our life. With our husband, with our children, in our apartment on the street where we live. And there, is where every day we have to find happiness. Around the table having dinner all together ...
In your book life, optimism overflows, colors that appear everywhere. But there is also a lot of pain and suffering. Deaths of young children, death of a husband, high-risk diseases almost like another member of the family. How does joy win in this equation?
A. God has created us to be happy, and not happy when we get to heaven. He who has not learned to be happy here on earth in his circumstances, by her husband's side, or being single, having a job or not having a job, having money or not having money, will never be happy. Each one in his circumstances has to learn to be happy. It is true that I, who have the opportunity to listen to many people, often hear: "Rosa I am desperate." And the one who doesn't have a problem has one, two, three, four. I tell him: take a pencil and paper, and write them down. And when they tell you, sometimes we cry together, with friends, with children, with your husband. But, that's it. I believe that problems humanize us, put us in the shoes of other people. The other day talking to a friend -our daughters make basketball together, she has an only daughter and I have mine, and every Saturday we go to the basketball game in the different schools where our daughters have to play-, and she said to me: “I Rosa saw your husband with all the children, so smiling and thought: of course this boy is this calm, as nothing has happened to him in life. I have read the book of the letter to your brother Chema, and I have said: What has not happened to your husband? ”
I think that going through difficulties, problems, small or large, illnesses, humanize you, make you put yourself in the shoes of other people and not be all day in superficial things. Sometimes we as parents make mistakes and say: "my child who does not suffer, my child I am not going to explain to him that I am having a bad economic situation, that my mom or dad are out of a job." We have to explain to our children that mom is sick, or dad has this problem, or now this has happened to granny. And this humanizes you. Suffering is good, crying is good, learning to know how to prosecute it.
So how do we manage pain, which sometimes seems to drag and sink us?
R. The mystery of pain and the cross is that, a mystery. The other day I was at the wake of a four-year-old girl, who had died in a domestic accident. And one says: Lord, why? And the mother said to me: Rosa, why? And, it is true, why? My husband died in twelve days. And why did God take away a husband who was more or less helping so many families in the world, helping to be a good father and a good mother, on top of the job he had here to educate fifteen children? Today that we are born and live a hundred years, and at fifty to half of your life, they go and tell you: "you stay and your other half leaves." And you say: Lord, I don't understand. I do not understand why. And the truth is not understood. Our intelligence is limited and there are many things that it does not understand. Although over time you can accept it more.
When my husband was dying, he called all the children and said, “God is very good. God is very good and loves us very much. He is our father, and there are bad examples, but it is normal for a father to be good. And first she took Javi and Montsita, which you did not know, then she took Carmineta, your older sister who did know her, just twenty-two years ago, and now ... ", and began to tell them what was happening .
It is true that there are many situations that we do not understand, but God is our father, God is good, God wishes good for us. And surely, from this apparent evil that we can see, there will be great fruits.
Death does not have the last word.
You and your husband clearly made a commitment to life, it can be said that you planted a lot. What are the most important fruits you have reaped?
A. We marry with the desire to have a family. We did not say: two, three ... Just having a family. And the first son was born, and we were told that he would not live more than three years. The second son was born a year and a day, and the third son also a year and a day. The third daughter dies after ten days. The second son, Javi, four months after the first one died. And you say: "Lord, I don't understand anything." I was in the San Juan de Dios hospital in Barcelona, and I could have opened the door and said: "goodbye cruel world !!!" It crossed my mind, and I said: no, God is good, God is good. We don't know why, but it's going through something. And the doctors at that time told us: "have no more children." I thought: I have married my husband to have a family, we both come from large families and we know from experience that each child is a gift.
No one gets into mom and dad's bed. Neither your father, nor your mother who has seen you cry and who loves you so much. Not your friends. I was a "reveler of life", and my friends told my mother: "Tell your daughter Rosa not to have any more children, she can also adopt." But I have said this even in China with my husband, and ahead of the authorities: "Not even the minister on duty tells you how many children you have to have." It's a mom and dad decision. And when dad and mom say yes to a new life, he is a son forever, forever, forever, forever. And you say: maybe he lives a year, ten days, twenty-two, here on earth, but then there is eternity.
And then there is that the children are not ours. "My boy, my boy, because I have raised him nine months ..." No. The boy is not yours. God gives it to you, for you to enjoy, and then it will fly. Well, you are educating it, and the children fly. Because he has an illness, because he has married, because he has become a missionary. It is not mine. Each child is a gift.
I think it is very important to know that this life is forever. Those who are born today will live a hundred years. The fertile time for women is very short. People get married every time later, statistically here, the first child is at thirty, and at forty, forty-odd already. You have just ten years of fertility. Then you are up to a hundred years old that you are going to live, that he can travel ... Of course when you are young and you are with your child, you say: I cannot go to the cinema, I cannot do this or that. No. My friends what they regret is that they were left alone with the couple. Because the problem of society today is not lack of money, lack of food, lack of space, lack ... no, it is loneliness.
The Ministry of Solitude has just been created in England. Not that of health, education, military, no, that of loneliness. It is that we have a problem.
When I had my children, I did not go with one, I went with one, with two, with three ..., I was pregnant and one in the stroller. People looked at me on the street, -I lived in the same neighborhood when I got married-, and they said to me: "Lady, don't you have a TV at home?" And things like that. Now they stop me on the street, they smile at me and say: thank you. Because your children are going to pay my pensions, they are going to change my diapers ... Of course, when you are young, you don't think that you are going to age like everyone else.
And now I, a widow, with fifteen children, "poor widow!" Good luck the widow! Surrounded by fifteen children. I have cried a lot, I have exhausted all tears. But now I am surrounded by fifteen children, with a thousand plans ... Those are the fruits.
A daughter of mine, at nineteen, has had the opportunity to be living in New York, very close to Central Park, she was in the house of two quite important businessmen, helping with the children, playing baby sister. And I went to see her. The lady of the house said to me: “Rosa, how did you do it? I want children like yours. I am impressed with your daughter, how attentive and helpful she is. Worker, always thinking of others. I want one like that." You reap what you have sown ... The models of the children are their parents. It is true that then there is the freedom of each one.
I think that the time is now so short, because the children are now going to study abroad ... you have them until almost eighteen, twenty years old. You are always her mother and father. But it is that in two days they have left home already.
I think it is important to educate our children in service, in thinking about the other. Maybe you will find a large family, I know them, they are perfect selfish people. Me with my tablet, my series, me, me, me.
And actually happiness is in thinking of others, in playing together. Now I will show you, six brothers sleep at home in one room. From a very young age, they learn to share. The future entrepreneurs, the future directors of multinationals, who are they going to be? Children of large families, who know how to work as a team. A company is not run by a person, it is run by a team of people, if it is not impossible to lead. Sure, at home you learn what you don't learn in any master's degree. To give in, to share, to ask for forgiveness, to lower your head, to say "I'm sorry." From the age of two they are learning that life is service, that today we play my game and tomorrow we play your game.
Today it is thought that to have a large family you have to have a lot of money. This is not like this. I mean, immigrants who are outside their country are the ones with the most children. More than the ones here. On the other hand, I also want to say that people with a lot of money, who have greater purchasing power (for example, famous billionaires), when you read the magazines of the heart, you see that they have: one, two children. The problem is more of the will. I want. It is clear that when one wants, one prepares the belt and says: "I am going to give up this or that." If I had stayed with the couple, surely I would have a better car than the one I have now. But this does not give you happiness, so we have to understand it and show it to our children.
Change of heading, Rosa. We are a fashion company. We were pleasantly surprised when we learned in your book that you have dedicated yourself for many years to the world of fashion, moving in the most influential settings in this world.
Starting from there, do you think this industry has the opportunity to say something really important to women today?
A. Yes, it is true, in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan. I believe that elegance is to be dressed every time as you have to be dressed. My house is always open and many friends of my children come, sometimes in the summer I say to someone: "Sorry, this is not the beach." I believe that it is important to educate our children in this regard.
I say to my daughters: "I want that when you go to a party, the boys look at your face, not at your cleavage, or at your legs, because you are worth a lot, it is not your legs that are worth the most."
We must educate our children and our children's friends. Ever when friends of my daughters have come with inappropriate shorts. My daughters opened the door and told me: "Mom, don't tell him anything, what a shame, where you tell him something, they won't come again" (laughs). How can I not tell you anything? In our house we have some rules, already in yours you will put yours. And with much affection I told him so. Those friends of my daughters are the ones who came home the most. And when they are small you are the one in charge, but when they grow up it is already the gang, the group, what the majority says. Well, you know that in the Postigo's house you have to be dressed in a certain way. That deep down is very pretty.
Beauty is attractive, it elevates us. God has created us for us to enjoy, and we can say: "ole, how handsome or how beautiful." And I really like that my daughters get ready, without spending an hour because we would fall into vanity, but how nice.
What advice do you give your daughters when it comes to dressing?
R. With the one that is falling, I like that they go well feminine. To make it clear that I am a woman and you are a man. I think it is very important that they are princesses. If one is a princess, she will find a prince to marry, who has the vocation of being married. And that they are respected.
Today there is a trend of "ugliness", everything dark, ugly, broken. That he goes with the broken jeans, very well, but when the panties are seen ... Should we follow the fashion? I love it, and my daughters have inherited something from me, a little. But what you cannot do is fall into "ugliness".
In a large family, and with concerns as serious as yours, is there room for fashion in such a family?
A. There is space, yes. Look, my daughters want to be influencers, and I tell them, "Well, see if you can reach me, that I have not bought any follower, nor any like" (laughs).
I, when the children were all small, made all of them the same clothes, for money and not to lose them. "Madam, there is one there dressed in red squares that I think is yours" (laughs). On the beach itself, they made my swimsuits all the same. When they saw a family with so many children, they counted: one, two, three ... ten! No, I have counted twelve! ”
I have it in my blood, I am from a centuries-old textile family, dedicated to fashion. You can say: "it is very expensive to follow fashion", or not. I think recycling is good. That is one of the luck of being a large family. I always say that we are an ecological and green family. Sometimes I see a photo and I see a son's pants and I say, this pants was worn by his brother, or this shirt, the shoes are clearly broken and end up being thrown away. But we are lucky that one buys one thing, another another, another another and then they take turns, pass it to him, re-tune it, and it's amazing! It is a lot of fun, really. Now we have just had a wedding, and as I am from the textile industry, at weddings it is necessary to have a brand, that the economy runs, but then I thought: but well, if we have a lot of friends who have wedding dresses that you wear once and that's it. Well, you ask, and you change, and you take a complement from here and another from there. And how fun it is to be thinking for a month, I'm going to ask this of this friend, and this of this other.
There are people who go through this, but you have just found a family that loves fashion, we enjoy them and we are happy and that does not mean it has to be more expensive.
In your book you use a well-known but well-quoted phrase: "The wrinkle is beautiful." What have been those moments of "wrinkle" but that overflow beauty in your life?
R. Look, when my husband died, we were lucky to be able to make the wake here at home. We put the coffin and many people came. Of course, I had fifteen children, each with her friends, her parents ... people started to pass, and of course, there were a hundred, two hundred people in the same space, some praying the rosary, others accompanying ...
In the midst of such impressive pain, such as burying such a young husband of fifty, leaving fifteen children, the beauty of faith was evident. A faith lived, not in plan: "now I am going to show how cool I am", no. Cry a lot, it is a loss, but accepting that we are here in passing, life continues. But Rosa, don't you keep crying? On top of that you deserve it ... But you say: no, my children deserve a happy childhood.
Also, I have to tell you, I don't have that much time to contemplate myself, it doesn't give my life for more. Thank God. People who have so much time to contemplate can say, well look, a wrinkle has come out here, a pimple here, I'm going to have a little surgery here and a little there. I have no time. On my Instagram, I am an influencer who cannot be seeing the light of the photo here or there. Sorry, I take a photo and that photo goes. My daughter says to me: "But mom, you turned out really fat, how could you hang this photo?" Look this is my life, I am like that, I am not going to take fifty photos to see later what is the photo that I put. It is true that everyone shows the fantastic outside. I once made a lemon mousse and it fell on the floor, and it broke. Well, I took the photo and said: “Look, I had made a mousse and it dropped. Now start again. " "Rosa, but how do you hang this? They are your weaknesses!" I'm not going to show that I'm a girl of ten. Well, I have my weaknesses, my opportunities, my strengths, my shortcomings. I am not going to paint you a thing that is not. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I have a great time, and sometimes I fight with my daughter because it is twelve in the morning and she is still sleeping. Like a normal family.
Your book also leaves another flavor in our mouths, which is happiness in simple things. What are those simple things?
A. At home we are very sweet, and we enjoy eating a lot. And at home, a large family, well, a lot of potatoes and a lot of pasta. You don't do "delicatessen". So when my children come from some house they tell me: "Mom, we have eaten this and that." And we enjoy those little things like food. Luckily we can enjoy a good meal.
Last chapter: Youth.
R. To my children I tell them to think: they have a warm bed, their food ... but it is not "me, me, me". My studies, my work, I will earn money, no! Since I was very young, I told them: "What is your NGO? You have many thanks, you have had an education and the luck to live in a family. Everything is fantastic, even if you lost your father.
They are happy children, which is educated. If you are crying all day, you are not saying that. No, you are a lucky child, with a lot of siblings, with a mother who loves you, it is amazing! It is to say: Thank you!
I tell them: When you were at school, have you gone to play with that boy in the corner that nobody wants to play with him? Or have you been all the time on your ball, in your gang of friends? When you get home from school, have you thought about calling that friend who has not come to school because they have operated on him? "No, it's just that he's not my friend." It doesn't matter, he's your partner ...
So I say, what is your NGO? What are you doing for others? You don't like this society, so what are you doing? It is true that they have seen us give conferences all over the world, now this afternoon I am taking a flight to Poland.
Yesterday there was a person eating here at home with his children and he said to me: "But Rosa, do you like to travel?" The truth is that I have always liked it, but it is very tired. I have had seven interviews in one day. Press, radio, television, news letters, star programs ... Seven in one day! Smiling, with the photo, where each one tells you his problem. And now in Poland with the difficulty of the language. Man, like "gustirrinín", I would like to be in a spa, or with my children having dinner somewhere. But they see it, usually a son usually accompanies me. And they know that Mom is going to help other families. And that's why we make the sacrifice that Mom is not at home, because we could be together doing something fun, it is a generosity on everyone's part. And life is service, it is there where we find happiness.
The last question, which we want to make coincide with the last chapter of the book.
They asked you what your secret was, and to answer you looked at the sky. Can you say that this is the motor that moves you?
R. Look, at home we have guests every day. The other day there was a person who is Muslim, a woman. I blessed the table, because at home we have this custom, and I said: "now you." And she did.
Each one has the faith that they have, I have not told them to convert to my faith, or to my language. But my faith was attractive to him. The other day she said to me: "I Rosa, the day I get married, I will want to get married for the Catholic Church." A Muslim. But saying, deep down: yours is a religion of love. I, in my book, do not speak of God until the end. This woman, who was a Muslim, was laughing with joy at home.
I think that the gift of faith is a gift, and not everyone has it. And this we must accept. But I, as a Christian, must show this joy of living. Joy despite the problems, because we all have problems. But you can cry at the corners or say, here are my problems and I will try to solve them.
Rosa, we say the same as those who came to your husband's funeral: at this time, we have touched a little piece of heaven. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Instagram: @HappyHappyChildren
Book: “How to be happy with 1, 2, 3…. sons?" (by Rosa Pich-Aguilera Roca) Editions WORD.