Beatriz del Castillo: "After my mother's death, I had to grow up very quickly."

Beatriz del Castillo (Barcelona, 1975) is an entrepreneur and creator of Bix, a zip-up underwear that improves the autonomy and intimacy of women with reduced mobility.

She studied at IPSI, the San Isidoro Pedagogical Institution. "I didn't like school because I preferred to be at home playing, creating, and drawing. I also hadn't found my group of friends," recalls Beatriz del Castillo. She repeated eighth grade. "Even though the reason was very sad, it was lucky because I found the people I fit in with. I was a real geek." of cinema and I found a friend who if I told her I loved Cary Grant, she knew who I was referring to," she explains.

After school I would go home. "When I was 6 I did ballet, but I wasn't an extracurricular child," she says. When I was 10 years old. I was 10 years old. This changes all the family logistics, with decisions having to be made and everything that comes after school wasn't a priority," Del Castillo confesses. When they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said: "A film director. Cinema helped me escape during my mother's illness. Both my father and my mother's family are also huge film fans and they passed on their passion for the classics to me," she points out.

The family business

Her father is also an entrepreneur. "Throughout his life, he's had a wide variety of jobs. He took a professional turn before my mother's illness and started working in the Lycra hosiery sector. He opened a shop that did very well because Italian hosiery was in fashion at the time. He only sold hosiery, socks, and unusual underwear. They had some famous customers. "Freddie Mercury, when he came to Barcelona to record the song with Montserrat Caballé, bought some underwear," Beatriz confesses.

Her mother and her father's sister ran the shop. "It closed when her mother died because it wasn't designed to hire people, but to be a family business," she says.

She has a sister who is five years younger than her. "After my mother's death, I had to grow up very quickly and took on a somewhat maternal role. I would pick her up from after-school activities and read her books at night. "I remember once having to go talk to the school and everything, when she was a little older," she explains.

Sister relationship

They have a very strong bond. "We're still very close. I had been her mother when I was little, but I can say that for a long time she has also been my mother. She's a psychologist, an incredible woman, and I admire her greatly. Life took our mother from us, but she has given us a very special relationship," she confesses.

They are an older family. "My grandparents had 15 children. My mother was the second in a large family that has always been very close. To survive, you need to be close to others, and it's a family that is a role model for me, because of the values of sisterhood and love they have taught us," explains Del Castillo.

She has two things in common with her father: entrepreneurship and the textile industry. "I suppose having absorbed my father's work since I was little and going to the store on Saturdays, in the end, becomes a role model," she admits. She was also influenced by the fact that her father was never afraid of changing jobs or starting a business. "I went from a sector that had nothing to do with anything, like the audiovisual industry, to starting a business in the textile industry," she explains.

She studied audiovisual communication, but a personal need led her to create Bix. "I had a recurring infection that forced me to change my underwear frequently. I realized there were no underwear you could take off without having to take off your pants and shoes. And that's what got me thinking and researching. Humans have been able to create artificial intelligence, but they're still struggling. 15% of the world's population has a mobility-related problem."