How did tennis come into your life? I discovered adaptive sports during the rehabilitation process I underwent at the Guttmann Institute, shortly after the accident. One day, I was with my wife at the Spanish championship, watching them compete, and I was amazed at how the players moved their chairs, how they hit the ball. I was glued to the fence and my wife said to me: "You're not going to tell me you want to be a tennis player now, are you?" And yes, here I am, competing since 2010.
Not content with that, you decided to organize a tennis tournament. Yes, because whenever I traveled to compete, the same thing happened to me. They would ask me where I was from, and when I answered Barcelona, everyone would praise it and say they were dying to come. And I wondered: "Why isn't there an international wheelchair tennis tournament in the city?"
And how did you achieve it? In parallel, I had met Johan Cruyff at a padel event. He helped me finance my first year of competition. Well, actually he told me: "I'll help you for one year and then it'll be up to you to prove if you're worth it or not." Then I became an ambassador for the Cruyff Foundation, which also granted me a scholarship to study a master's degree in sports management. There I gained knowledge of marketing and finance and began to conceptualize the tournament, which started as a master's project. But some professors told me that the project was very cool and that I had to carry it out. And last year the first edition was held.
It seems that as soon as you ended up in a wheelchair, you picked up a racket, but what was that process of reinventing yourself really like? Starting a new life is not easy. You wake up one day in the hospital and you can't feel your legs. And you think: "Oh, what's going to become of my life now?" At first, you feel a lot of fear and you think you'll become useless, that you'll be stuck in a bed forever. Then you realize that's not the case. There's also a period of anger where you ask yourself: "Why me?" But I try to think positively. Yes, I could have had a better injury, but also a worse one. With that analysis of thinking that I had been very lucky, that I was only in a chair and that nothing was wrong, I kept going. And then, with rehabilitation came tennis, which made me stronger and improved my autonomy. It was a success to use tennis as a form of rehabilitation and social inclusion.
It's a bit of a solitary sport to be a therapy. Yes, but it also makes you sharpen up, because you have to travel alone through Europe and you gain autonomy. I tried basketball and they gave me so many beatings that I thought it wasn't for me. Tennis is also tough, technically, physically, and mentally. But it motivates me, even though sometimes you have a terrible time in a two-and-a-half-hour match because, unlike other sports like swimming or running, you're alone, but on the other side, you have a guy who wants to mess with you. Then, off the court, there's a very good atmosphere among the athletes. I have very good friends on the circuit.
You've also won titles in doubles... It's more rewarding. When one is weak, the other pushes harder. When you win, the satisfaction is greater; when you lose, you have comfort. And it's also more spectacular, because the rallies are longer, and sometimes we can even collide, when the ball falls in the middle and we both go for it at the same time. It's fun.
Do you prefer to organize a tournament or play it? I prefer to play it, but setting it up has a motivation behind it: to fulfill my dream of making wheelchair tennis known. It's super spectacular and people really like it. We have to show it to the world. The work of organizing it is hard and generates a lot of stress, but when you start receiving congratulations from players, the public, institutions, etc., it's very gratifying. When my competition ends, I will continue with the organization. I have a moral debt to give back to tennis what it has given me. So come to the tournament and bring your friends!
What other passions do you have outside of tennis? Nowadays, above all, my children Héctor and Adriana, five-year-old twins, who are growing up too fast. I want to enjoy my family. What hasn't been possible is for them to pick up a racket. He does judo and she does rhythmic gymnastics. They don't like tennis.
It doesn't seem like being in a wheelchair has made you less happy. I am 100% happy. Exactly as happy as before the accident. Or maybe even a little more. Everything I have is thanks to the wheelchair. If I am here and organizing this tournament, it is thanks to the wheelchair. I have lived two lives. One life before and another sitting. Of course, I would prefer to walk, because everything would be easier, but this experience has helped me focus on what is really important.
Interview: Germán Aranda Photography: Rita Puig-Serra
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