NEARLY 30,000 tennis fans want Mallorca airport to be named after the greatest male player in recent history, if not in all time – a petition is gathering signatures practically by the half-hour.
Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open, where he clinched his 21st Grand Slam after a gruelling five-hour match against Russia's Daniil Medvedev
Started by two residents on the largest of the Balearic Islands, Víctor Bonnin and Sebastián Muntaner, the Change.org campaign began the very day after Rafael Nadal netted his 21st Grand Slam title after an unexpected Australian Open win – it being one of the few venues he has found difficult to crack, having only taken home the trophy once before – and, in the space of a week, has gathered 29,070 supporters.
“Rafael Nadal is, without doubt, the best male tennis player in history and, certainly, the best ambassador the island of Mallorca has,” say the petition authors.
The sporting ace was born in Manacor, as was his wife Mery, whom he has been with since they were teenagers, and neither has ever lived anywhere else, except briefly for university in Palma de Mallorca.
“That's why we've started collecting signatures to ask the government of Spain, [national airport management company] AENA, and the Balearic government, to do whatever is in their power to rename Mallorca airport after Rafa Nadal.
“We think Rafa Nadal represents values that should be an example to us all: Modesty, honour, politeness, self-sacrifice, tenacity and hard work.
“Wherever he goes, he's made our island famous, and for that reason, nothing would delight us more than being able to see his name up in lights whenever we go past or use the airport.”
At the moment, Mallorca airport, in Palma, does not have a 'real person' in its title – the Son Sant Joan terminal is named after Saint John.
Airports are often renamed, around the world, either after the passing of a key figurehead or, sometimes, within their lifetimes – Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi, India, being one example; former South African president Nelson Mandela had an airport named after him in the capital of the west-African islands of Cabo Verde, Praia, when he was still alive.
The petition authors give some of Spain's more recent examples.
“In the past few years, we've seen how Granada-Jaén airport has incorporated the name of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, Madrid's being renamed Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas [previously Madrid-Barajas, it took the name of the first-ever president in Spain's democratic era shortly after his death from Alzheimer's], Santander airport took the name of Seve Ballesteros [the late, great golfer who became the first of only two Spaniards ever to reach world number one], and Lanzarote incorporated the name of César Manrique,” the petition concludes.
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