Since winning his first French Open at the age of 19, to now, Rafael Nadal is a household name in tennis. And as a result, his fame spread beyond the tennis courts. From modelling with Tommy Hilfiger to appearing in Shakira’s 2010 music video “Gypsy,” he reached international stardom that only a few sports stars have ever achieved. Through it all, the people closest to him in Mallorca barely felt a thing, and that was entirely by design. 

“My family preferred to stay a little bit away from all this attention,” Nadal said, speaking to People Magazine ahead of the release of his Netflix docuseries Rafa. The result, he explains, was that whenever he returned home to Mallorca, life felt entirely ordinary.

“In some way, I protected all of them from this world, and I think they were happier like this. In a personal way, I was happier, too, that I was able to have a very private life when I was at home.”

His wife, Maria “Xisca” Perelló, is at the heart of that private life. In fact, the two are childhood sweethearts from Mallorca, and Xisca spent almost his entire career in the shadows of Nadal’s career, something that is quite unusual for an athlete with his level of attention. Perelló, who avoided putting a spotlight on herself whenever she could and rarely came to watch her husband’s matches, was a mystery for many years to fans. When she did explain her choice publicly, she was characteristically direct.

“It’s not a world I want to be part of, nor do I think Rafa would have chosen to be with a woman who looked for that in life,” she said. On why she chose not to travel with Nadal on tour, she was equally candid: “It would asphyxiate me, and then he would have to be worrying about me.”

Xisca co-founded the Rafa Nadal Foundation in 2008 alongside Nadal, and has served as its Projects Director ever since, with the foundation focusing on social integration and education for underprivileged children. She mostly works in the background, which suits her nature perfectly.

After 14 years together, the pair got engaged in January 2019 and married that October in Mallorca. They were blessed with their sons, Rafael Jr. in 2022 and Miquel in 2025, the year following Nadal’s retirement from professional tennis. Nadal has made a conscious effort in retirement to be there for the things he had always missed when he was on the tour for 20 years.

“I love being a father. It’s an amazing experience, one of the best. I especially like to bring them to school in the morning, to pick them up in the afternoon,” he said. He remains active through his tennis academy and the foundation, but the balance has shifted. “I’m enjoying both things,” he said.

It’s a life that the Spaniard has built up over the past 20 years, hidden from the cameras and buzz that had become his whole world. The 22 Grand Slam winner, who has won 14 Roland Garros titles and faced Federer and Djokovic in some of the biggest encounters, didn’t want all of it to come with him. He built it in Mallorca, with Xisca, and it held together through every injury, every comeback, every final. 

Rafa lands on Netflix as Roland Garros plays out without him

The docu-series was launched on Netflix on May 29, and the timing is very intentional. It came in the middle of the French Open, which Nadal has won a record 14 times. The release also falls just days before he turns 40 on June 3. 

The four-part series, produced by Skydance Sports, will reveal one of the most celebrated athletes of all time, not just through his epic moments, but also the work that went on behind the scenes that maintained his champion status for over 20 years. The series takes a look at the triumphs of Roland Garros, at the generation match-ups with Federer and Djokovic, and at the man behind the legend, showing the pain, the pressure, and the relentless pursuit of success even when it felt like Nadal’s body could no longer hold up. 

The most vulnerable part is where Nadal’s physical pain is addressed. It is not a series of abstracted or post facto heroic sufferings, but a series of medical decisions, enforced comebacks, and compromises with the body. Emmy Award-winning director Zach Heinzerling shared what resonated with him most.

“With Rafa’s story, triumph is expected; what surprised me was his willingness to reveal the uncertainty and vulnerability behind that greatness,” he said. 

Nadal himself described his own decision to open the door as fully as he did. He called it “an intimate look into what my career has been like, with details that were previously unknown and a touch of reality regarding what the life of a professional tennis player is like with various injury struggles.” 

It is a big deal for a guy who has spent 20 years shielding his family from precisely this type of exposure to let cameras in on those corners of his life. He preserved his private world, which he created in Mallorca. This is the first time the rest of the world can see what it really looks like.