Hordes of foreign visitors climbing aboard a travel coach is a familiar sight in the Costa de Sol.
This was a unique early morning excursion to Fuengirola, however, for the start of Nadal’s farewell show.
With the media room at the Palacio de Deportes too small to accommodate the journalists wanting to speak to Nadal, hundreds of reporters and photographers were instead asked to go to the five-star Higueron Hotel in the hills overlooking the tourist resort.
Inside a vast conference hall, journalists were reminded it was the team news conference for Spain – not solely the Nadal show.
Inevitably almost all the questions – in both the English and Spanish parts – were for Nadal.
Nadal’s answers included the importance of saying farewell at home, the thought process leading up to his retirement announcement and that he assumed Roger Federer would be “too busy” to turn up in Malaga.
Federer and Nadal famously held hands and cried when the Swiss star retired at the Laver Cup in 2022.
You would expect a similar outpouring from Nadal – with or without Federer – whenever Spain says ‘Gracias Rafa’ this week.
