GranollersOn September 17, 2018, Girona played against Celta de Vigo in Montilivi. It was the season in which the Girona team had been promoted to Primera and the white-and-red fiefdom was often full. Like thousands of people, Martí Batallé, Xavier Pocurull, Óscar Ollé and Pau Navarro attended the meeting. That day, however, everything changed. After training with his team, Fraikin Granollers, they had a traffic accident on their way to Girona. Martí and Xavier lost their lives, Óscar suffered minor injuries and Pau suffered irreversible spinal cord injuries.
“I had to start again”, explains Pau, in conversation with ARA. Handball was his life. “It was my life project. My dreams as a child, and at that time, at the age of 18, were focused on handball. I was also in the best moment of my career. I was closer than ever where I wanted to come from. That summer I had played in the European Championship with the junior team and we had come second in the World Cup. Although I had a club card, I had already made my debut and had played the entire pre-season with the first team.” remember That September 17, the whole life I had imagined vanished and in its place were doubts, fears, but above all gratitude for having survived. “Mentally it was hard, but I got over the grief in that sense very quickly because of the gratitude I felt,” he confesses.
The drama surrounding him, however, was overwhelming. “It destroys everything. All the plans, the dreams… My life plan was focused on handball and it suddenly disappeared. It wasn’t up to me, it wasn’t my mistake… Mentally it’s the most complicated, despite the fact that the physical loss is brutal. I had to look for a new meaning in my life. I had my life focused on sport, and it stopped being a possibility,” he explains. The accident fractured his C6 and C7 vertebrae and caused him to become quadriplegic.
“I remember the first time I could see myself in the mirror and for me it was one of the worst moments of my life. Just before the accident I was in great shape, very strong, and I weighed 100 kilos. I remember see myself in the mirror with my chest sunken in. I could see all my ribs. I had lost 24 kilos. It was traumatic. I remember that moment in the hospital bathroom mirror… Me in the chair barely able to move and to stand there in front and say ugh!”
I remember looking in the mirror with my chest sagging and I could see all my ribs. I had lost 24 kilos. It was traumatic”
From there began a long road, not only physical and medical, but also of acceptance. “The longest process is that of accepting yourself. I did the physical process at the Guttmann, the mental process I did at the Vall d’Hebron, but you can’t do the acceptance process anywhere. In these places you’re in a bubble where it’s super comfortable no matter what situation you’re in. Everyone is in a similar situation to you and the professionals understand you very well. You start to see yourself differently when you go to college and to make your way among people you have to touch their asses so they let you pass while they’re looking down. Just like when you make out with a girl or a boy or when you have sex for the first time,” explains Pau. When he walked through the doors of the Guttmann Institute, a month and a half after the accident, he already asked which sport suited him best.
Reinvent yourself as an obligation
“My occupational therapist started to explain to me that I could do swimming, tennis, badminton… But the team sport I could do was wheelchair rugby. There was a team in Barcelona and I went to see it “. Since then, that was his goal. “It’s a different sport to conventional rugby. They gave it that name because they needed a name for a conventional sport, but a lot of the rules of rugby don’t apply. It’s a contact sport and hence the name. There are a lot of types of disabled people, this shows the Paralympic sentiment,” he recounts proudly. “I’m not saying it’s replaced my pre-accident dreams, because it’s not the same and I’m not going to lie to you, but I’m really happy to have made a new wheelchair rugby team and to be able to share with colleagues a new experience”. Four years after the accident, Pau made his debut with the Spanish wheelchair rugby team.
“We are few players in Spain, and when a young boy starts to play and they see that he has competitive sports skills, they want to project him”, he explains, trying to take credit. Pau is a quiet boy, with a hint of shyness, which disappears when he goes out on the track, where his ambition never leaves him. “For me, participating in the Olympic Games has been a dream since childhood. Before, with handball, I began to see that it could stop being a dream to be a real possibility, that it could be fulfilled. Right now, with the rugby selection is complicated. Having finished fifth in European B makes it impossible for us to get to Paris. It’s very complicated, but I don’t rule it out in the future.”
The fans for Girona
There are many things that have changed in Pau’s life since he suffered the accident, but the fans for Girona have not, not by a long shot. “I’m a fan of Girona thanks to them. When they started doing the promotion stages I got hooked and we started going to the stadium. Once the accident happened, they got on very well with us. They the captain and the president to come to the burial of Martí and Xavi, here in Granollers. My friend and I, who survived, were given a year’s pass to go to the field. From there we renewed the card. When we went down to Segona we kept going: my love for Girona continues.”
The traumatic experience of the accident, far from separating them from the white-and-red colors, united them even more in Montilivi. “For Óscar and me, this year when Girona went up to Primera, Martí and Xavi came to mind a lot. You think about how they would like to be here. They loved going to the stadium, and we, that we have the possibility of continuing to go there, we must do it for them. We must not deprive ourselves of the happiness that Montilivi brings us.”
