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Rosa Esteva (Barcelona, ​​1942). A restaurant entrepreneur, she founded Grupo Tragaluz and had a hotel and 22 restaurants that changed the way of understanding the business. After selling them, he has kept the first, El Mordisco, out of love.

Are you very worried? If all the bars and restaurants close, what are we going to live on? Politicians live off our VATs. Sometimes I think they are idiots, that they have never run any business. What do you reproach them for? I wish they had explained things better. It cannot be that thousands of people go to a demonstration and the schools are closed the next day. I have friends from Milan who kept coming to Spain without any proof until recently. What will you do? Money does not come down from heaven. I employ 150 people, including cooks, waiters, managers, I can't last a month with everything closed. What makes a restaurant good? Love. Not being a number. The atmosphere. Finding you at home. I always tell my waiters that they have to be hosts, not waiters. Do you eat very differently in Barcelona and Madrid? It depends. Madrid used to be more sophisticated, people liked to eat with a tablecloth. Not anymore, it's the other way around, they are more modern than us. Do you like to try what the competition does? I don't like to see it like that. I ate nothing in the Trifón, Carles Abellán has been with me, as many times with Nandu Jubany ... I have a lot of friends with restaurants, but for me they are not competition. I am not El Corte Inglés, but you can learn from others, I learn things every day, I like to invent. They copy me a lot, yes. The style, the way of being. Even Ferran Adrià says that there is a before and after in the kitchen after what I invented. There must be a reason, because I was an unfortunate 37-year-old when I started ... How were those beginnings? At 23 I had four children. I separated from my husband. I set up a restaurant where you could go alone, without anyone asking you: 'Hello, are you alone?' So I made up a restaurant where people could come and have a good time. I was lucky that the emeritus King came, the Infanta, Marshal, those from Vinçon ... I made them a fun and different meal. At Christmas I cooked them as if they were my children. 35 years have passed since then and last year she got rid of almost everything. I left the Hotel Omm, which was the best in the world, for Mrs. Colau. I have rented it. I have only stayed with the Nibbles, whom I love very much. And I still have five employees who accompany me from the first day. Have you not thought about retiring? I have no schedule or now. What amuses me is working. If I stay home watching TV, I die. There are not many hotel businesswomen with her career, do you feel like a pioneer? I have never seen life that way, differentiating between men and women. I was a woman who was worth, period. I have the eggs of a man but I am a woman. Why Bite? Because I did not dare call my first restaurant a restaurant, it was the time when they were a serious thing, a tablecloth. I served something else, salads and hamburgers, top quality, yes. The raw material is the most important. I know the garden where my tomatoes come from. Where have you eaten better? I was lucky that as a child my father took me to eat at the best restaurants in the world. Now it is something I do with my cooks, we go to the Basque Country, Japan or China to eat and learn. My favorite from Spain is that of the Roca brothers.

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