You don’t have to dive into the deepest bowels of the Internet to realize that on Rafael Nadal Parera has been written, and a lot has been written. It is difficult to find the exact figure, but the bibliography on the Manacorí tennis player is, without a doubt, one of the most extensive that exists on any active athlete.
In Spain, The first to write about his life were Jaume Pujol and Manel Serras.who addressed the figure of Nadal in the spring of 2007, when the Spaniard barely had two Grand Slam titles, both achieved at Roland Garros; that is, fewer trophies than what they look like today in the display cases of Carlos Alcaraz.
Later came the work that structured everything, Rafaof John Carlinthe book that, published in 2011 and with Nadal’s account already swelled to ten Grand Slams, came after a request from the Manacorí team to the British author. “If they proposed to me to do the second part now, I would not accept“, Carlin himself settled after Nadal accepted his appointment as ambassador of the Saudi Tennis Federation. Asked to participate in this report, the Londoner was blunt: “I no longer talk about Nadal“.
We must therefore advance to the most recent works on Nadal to know the motives, concerns and adventures of those who have followed in the footsteps of, surely, the best Spanish athlete of all time. “After almost ten years accompanying him around the world, I came to the conclusion that I had a book inside me“, he assures Sebastian Festauthor of Gracias; The legacy of Rafael Nadal. “I had seen so many things and I had so much material that I thought it was important to put it in order.“.
Others like Alejandro Ciriza y Javier Martínez They accepted commissions from their respective publishers. “I didn’t have in mind to write any book, but one day they proposed it to me, just returning from the US Open, and After two weeks of thinking about it, I decided to accept“, points out the first, Nadal’s shadow for almost a decade for the newspaper The Country and author of Come on, Rafa!published in 2023. “They offered it to me too and well, Despite the initial modesty, I thought, why not, let’s take advantage of this opportunity“adds Martínez, counterpart in The World and author of Rafael Nadal, portrait of a mythwhose release came earlier, in 2015.
“Writing about Nadal is an immense responsibility”
Journalist and author
“I don’t know if writing about Nadal is guaranteed success, I would say no, because I have done it daily in my work and, with all due respect, I have read many things about him that did not make much rigor or sense.“explains Ciriza, knowing the difficulty of writing about an athlete who continues to be active. “Even so, the responsibility is immense. You are writing about a world sports star, someone with a lot of media attention, and we know that There are many people who also reject it, people who don’t like what Nadal means beyond the slopes”.
“My idea was to make a book that escaped the stereotype, that is, without betraying reality, looking for other angles beyond ‘come on, Rafa’. I don’t know if that’s why or not, but For me the biggest difficulty was accessing it. He is an apparently very transparent guy, but I tried to open original doors and no hand was extended to me,” says Martínez, forced, like Ciriza, to combine writing the book with his daily obligations as a journalist. “For this reason, I turned to voices like those of José Manuel Bearán, Javier Gomá or José Antonio Marinato give it a different approach. “Also helping me, it must be said, were people linked to Nadal’s career for one reason or another, such as José Perlas, Juan Avendaño, Martín Vassallo Argüello or Isaki Lacuesta.”
“I wanted to tell my experience from the first person. I had experienced very particular things following Rafa and I allowed myself to do so. In fact, there is an anecdote that reflects very well,” says Fest, collaborator of this medium and author, in turn, of Sin reda book that reviews the rivalry between the Manacorí and Roger Federer. “When he wins his first US Openin 2010, gave some interviews and the last one was with me. We left the offices where I had attended to the rest of my colleagues and they told me, do you see that white van? Get in.”
“I got into the truck and after a while Nadal arrived, alone“adds the Argentine author. “We were there alone, in silence. I had seen him answer so many questions that I respected his rest. Then the rest of his team began to arrive, his parents, his agent, trainers. We went from Queens to Manhattan and it was the best interview he ever gave me. Not the longest, but the most personal. It was very loose. He told me many very intimate things. That’s when you realize that you are looking at someone who is truly special.”
“Whoever knows and knows Nadal the most could write a book, but they are not going to do it, they are not interested”
Journalist and author
Nadal’s bibliography is so extensive that There have even been biographical comics published about him.. “Going page by page, vignette by vignette, telling Nadal’s life was a very gratifying experience,” he explains. Sofia Plazascriptwriter and illustrator of Rafa Nadalpublished in 2020 by the Verbum publishing house to bring the Manacorí’s career to younger readers.
“I remember I had a very bad time drawing her hair“, he adds with a laugh. “He is such a well-known character with such a visual impact that illustrating him was very simple, but his hair… Those images in which he has long, disheveled and sweaty hair are very difficult to translate into the vignette It may seem silly, but it greatly increased the difficulty.“.
Now, in any case, with the end of the tennis player Nadal just around the corner – he will retire after the Davis Cup that concludes on November 24 in Malaga – who knows if we are approaching more works, the first with the history of manacorí already with a beginning and an end. “I don’t know if there is still a book to be written about Nadal“Warns Martínez.”What I do suspect is that whoever can write it is not going to do it. He is not interested. Not for anything scandalous, far from it, but for details or things that will remain unknown.”
