Spanish VIPs

Rafa Nadal (born 1986)

Rafael Nadal Parera, best known as Rafa Nadal, is the most valued and respected sportsman in Spain today and is considered one of the best tennis players of all time. He has won an extraordinary number of championships and medals and beaten many world records. He has won 14 Grand Slam tournaments, only beaten by Roger Federer who has won 17. He holds the record for Roland Garros titles, having won nine times. He has also won Wimbledon twice and the tennis gold medal for Spain in Beijing in 2008. He has been part of the Spanish Davis cup team since 2004 and has ranked world number one for three separate years. He is the only male tennis player to win three Grand Slam titles in one year, each on different surfaces. In 2006, he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sport and in 2008 was awarded the Prince of Asturias prize for Sporting Achievement amongst many other sporting awards and titles.

Rafa Nadal was born in June 1986 in Manacor, Mallorca. He comes from a sporting family and is nephew of the former Barcelona player Miguel Angel Nadal. He played many sports from early childhood but started to show a particular talent for tennis which was spotted and coached by his uncle Toni Nadal. At the age of nine, he entered his first official competition, which he won and became the Spanish champion for his age group at 11 and 12 years old. He went on to triumph in junior tennis and was a junior semi-finalist in Wimbledon in 2002, playing against players two years older than himself.

At 15, he became the youngest player to win an official ATP match and by the age of 17 he was included in the ATP list of the 100 best players in the world. At the same age he reached the third round of Wimbledon – an achievement matched only by Boris Becker. In 2008, he reached number one ATP ranking, dislodging Roger Federer who had held the position for over four and a half years.

In recent years, Rafa Nadal has suffered a few injury setbacks and in 2012 was unable to join the Spanish team at the London Olympics where he was due to carry the Spanish flag in the opening ceremony. He made a dramatic return to full form in 2013 and started 2014 as ATP rank number one once more. In 2019, he won the French Open for a record 12th time and since 2018 has been ranked number two in the world after Novak Djokovic, recovering the number one position in late 2019.

Apart from his physical prowess, Nadal is known for his excellent qualities of sportsmanship and fair play although he has been criticised by his opponents for time wasting with his obsessive series of ticks and rituals before each serve. His uncle Toni is no longer his main coach but is still his most important mentor, and his long-standing partner Xisca Perelló also comes from Manacor.

In July 2008, an asteroid was named after Rafa Nadal and in 2010 he appeared in the pop video ‘Gypsy’ with Shakira. In April 2017, the centre court of the Barcelona Open was named ‘pista Rafa Nadal’. Through his ‘fundación Rafa Nadal’ he has been involved in many philanthropic projects and was highly praised during the devastating floods in Mallorca in October 2018, not only for donating to a rebuilding fund but also for getting personally involved with the work of cleaning up. He got married to his long-standing partner Xisca Perelló in October 2019.