Rafael Nadal, 36, is regarded as one of the finest players on the field today and has won a remarkable 22 Grand Slam tournaments in his career. His most recent triumph came at the French Open in June of this year.
Despite being a great tennis player on the court, Rafa frequently found himself in the news for his embarrassing comments on many other topics, such as the current one regarding the independence of Catalonia.
Why did Rafael Nadal oppose the Catalonian independence issue?
The National Day of Catalonia, which is celebrated on September 11, honors the Catalan forces’ trout in the city of Barcelona during the War of Spanish Succession in 1714 and many Catalans consider the single-day celebration to be significant since it symbolizes what they see as the end of the region’s independence from the rest of Spain.
Rafael Nadal, a tennis pro who once lashed out at Catalan independence advocates, said that every Spanish national must uphold the government’s laws and regulations regardless of their region, story, language, or culture; and this notion of this superstar raised the eyebrows of many as they kept denouncing the icon for his unorthodox remarks.
The King of Clay, however, will not be rejoicing as Catalans walk to the roads to partake in today’s festivities and in the past, the 22-time Grand Slam winner, who was just eliminated from the US Open, had opposed the Catalan independence openly.
El Nino again criticized the regional government of Catalonia for choosing to organize a referendum on independence in 2017 as well as argued that all citizens should uphold the law regardless of what happens to their nations.
According to a local newspaper, Nadal said, “I don’t fathom a Spain without Catalonia. I wouldn’t like to fathom or see it.”
A few weeks prior to the referendum’s public vote, Rafa also spoke out against it, but he added that he had a great deal of respect for those who had lived peacefully in their nation for generations.
The first Catalan Independence referendum came in 2017 which sparked a massive unrest in the region and also gained a lot of supports from the outside world but the Spanish Central Government earned a green signal from the European Union to ban all the movements regarding that issue.
As a result, numerous Catalans disobeyed the government’s orders to stay away from the elections on October 1 and thousands of them engaged in violent altercations with police as a result and violence broke out when Spanish riot police broke into voting places and grabbed vote boxes, injuring many people.
The day following the vote, Nadal acknowledged to being upset as he spoke with media about the pandemonium in Barcelona and surroundings.
