Toni Nadal, coach for 27 years of his nephew and externalist Rafa Nadal and one of the most influential voices in the sports world, has broken this Friday a taboo deeply rooted in the most conservative sectors of Balears: “In Mallorca there is Catalan talk.” Before a room full of leaders and PP militants during the XXI National Formation Congress, the words of the businessman have dismantled one of the identity stories that starts from the Balearic right has defended for years.
At one point in his speech, Nadal has been overwhelmed by asserting that “it cannot be that the politician interfers in all areas of society”, ensuring that “a long time ago” he transmitted “a politician” whose name has not revealed: “Why do you interfere with language issues? In Mallorca we speak Catalan because the philologists say so. If there is a philologist, if there is a philologist. The sports coach, who has claimed to defend “individual freedom”, has stressed that “intrude more than the account and politicize everything makes a skinny favor to society, the citizen.” “And I think this is essential to be very clear,” he said.
Nadal's words rumble precisely in a political space where for decades it has been insisted that in Mallorca Mallorcan is spoken -as well as the Balearic at the autonomous level -and in which an insularist narrative has been cultivated that has served as a batter against the policies of linguistic normalization and educational cohesion in Catalan. However, linguistic reality is incontestable: Mallorcan is a dialectal variant of Catalan recognized as such by legal frameworks that protect the language of the islands, such as the Autonomy Statute and the Law of Linguistic Standardization.
The manifestations of Rafa Nadal's former coach also arrive at a time of special sensitivity: the Government of Marga Prohens (PP), with the support of Vox, has eliminated by law the Catalan language as a work requirement to access health and has reduced its demand in other areas of the public function, awakening criticism from numerous groups and entities that see in these policies an attempt to fragment and weaken the use of the use of the use of the use of Catalan in the islands. Not surprisingly, the PP executive, in exchange for being able to carry out the autonomous budgets of 2025, has been folded to several that in linguistic matters imposed the extreme right, such as the reform of the Balearic Law of Education with the aim of guaranteeing the vehicularity of the Castilian in the teaching and “the knowledge of Spanish in the educational system”.
The Prohens cabinet has also approved a decree law with which the deadline to prove the knowledge of Catalan will be extended from two to four years in the stabilization processes of all public employees of the islands. A measure that, as the Executive himself recognized, has been agreed with VOX with the aim of dealing, in the words of the Vice President of the Government, Antoni Costa, to the “serious” situation in which public workers from different areas would be found at the work level, especially in the foundation of attention and support for the agency, for not being able to stabilize its place as a consequence, he said, of not having the required linguistic degree.
The circumstance is also given that in April of last year the Royal House granted the status of 'real' to an entity that erroneously defends that the “Balearic” is a different language to the Catalan, which made the old controversy that still survives among those who maintain, according to the linguistic consensus and the statut of autonomy resurface, which are the same language, that is, that in Balears there is Catalan; and a group that maintains, against the general criteria, that they are two different languages.
Toni Nadal, coach, entrepreneur and signing of the PP
Bronze Medal of the Royal Order to Sports Merit and became one of the most laureate coaches in the history of the Spanish racket, combining the sport with real estate businesses, Toni Nadal decided in 2023 decided to make the leap to politics after being signed by the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for the new foundation of the party.
Apart from his work as a sports coach, he has offered multiple talks and conferences aimed at coaches, youth and companies. It also manages the company Tenis Invest, whose corporate purpose is dedicated to the acquisition, alienation and assignment of equipment, machinery and tooling, according to the Official Gazette of the Mercantile Registry (BORME).
Overturned in the sports training of his nephew since he was four years old, Antonio Nadal Homar (Manacor, February 22, 1961) was clear that, among other values, he wanted to instill those of daily work, the effort, the constant improvement and, above all, an effective management of adversity. Under his tutelage, Rafa Nadal achieved the title in 76 tournaments, 16 of them Grand Slam: Ten Roland Garros, Tres US Open, two Wimbledon and an Australian Open.
