Family, Love, and Freedom
Roxana Nicula’s journey to leading Fundalib, a classical liberal foundation in Spain, started nearly 2,000 miles away in her native Romania.
In Roxana’s youth, Romania was a communist dictatorship under the control of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Her family was often targeted by the state because of her late great-grandfather’s legacy as a liberty-minded mayor of a small village. After the regime fell, it was her great-grandmother who set a spark in Roxana.
In 1991, they returned together to the land that had been confiscated from her family under communism.
“It happened when I was 15, but it’s one of my most vivid memories,” Roxana said. “My great-grandmother marched barefoot into the field of sunflowers, kneeled down, and kissed the ground.”
The words she spoke that day left a powerful impression on Roxana. “She said, ‘If you don’t have the land to feed yourself and to feed your family, you have no security over anything in your life.”
It was Roxana’s first introduction to the concept of private property and ultimately an inspiration for her to dedicate her life to the cause of freedom.
Upon attending university in Bucharest, she became involved in the National Liberal Party, witnessing the first change in democratic governments in 1997. That year, she also met her husband, Juan Pina, a Canadian-born child of immigrants from Spain.
The pair later relocated to Mexico City to run a magazine for liberal thinkers before returning to Spain, where they launched Fundalib, also known as Fundación para el Avance da la Libertad, in 2015. Roxana serves as president, and Juan as secretary general.
Fundalib received a startup grant from Atlas Network in its early years, and the worldwide freedom movement has been a major part of Roxana and Juan’s lives since. They even celebrated their 25th anniversary among friends in the movement at Europe Liberty Forum in Warsaw.
“Coming from where I’m from, the principles and ideas of liberty have a very important role in anything I do as an individual, as a mother, as an entrepreneur, as a daughter, and as a wife,” Roxana said. “I’ve been lucky to share with Juan the same vision. We are very united for each other and the love of liberty.”