Try to stay calm and hit the opponent underwater
Anonymous
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Gabi Villarrubia (64) smiles, shakes my hand and offers me a drink at the Club Natació Barcelona restaurant, her current center:
He tells me:
-I was in the ICU of the Vall d'Hebron hospital and someone brought a monitor: we wanted to see the opening of the Barcelona'92 Games! I remember the beginning of the ceremony, little else. I lasted half a session: I lost consciousness. They came 45 days in a vegetable coma, my first coma. I've been declared clinically dead four times, you know?
And what happens in a coma?
Frown, rogue.
-There is no tunnel, no lights. There is nothing. Although in another of those comas something strange happened to me...
-Tell...
–While I was unconscious, my son Gerard (he was three years old at the time) fell from a swing and hit his head and also temporarily lost consciousness. When I woke up 22 days later, I asked, 'What about Gerard? Now it is OK...?'.
–Do you have any explanation?
-I suppose that, in my unconsciousness, I caught something, maybe I listened to the conversations of my relatives when they came to visit me.
-If not...?
-Don't insist, man, that there are no tunnels or little lights...
And do you live in fear?
-I'm terrified of planning a vacation or going to the movies. My policy is day to day. A few weeks ago I was admitted again, I have 46 surgeries. One of my doctors told me: 'You live on a bomb'. Luckily, I went back to swimming three years ago. Regaining swimming and water polo have given me back my illusion. And part of the fault lies with this man...
And he points to Josep Gasch, his friend from adolescence, his companion in water polo adventures at the CN Montjuïc, who is joining us at the gathering.
(In the 1970s and 1980s, Villarrubia –popularly known as Villapela because then the peseta coins were blond– and Gasch won five leagues and in 1978 they were even runners-up in Europe).
"I just did what I had to do," says Gasch.
-And it's a lot. Josep and my children Gerard and Clàudia, and my sister Montse and my brother-in-law Alberto have been my heart. Because I've spent thirty years without leaving home. I went from the sofa to the bed and sometimes, to the neighborhood bar, to drink with my fake friends, and many times, to the hospital, to add operations... Because look.
He shows me his navel.
- I have no gut!
–¿...?
Diabetes has devastated me. I was on dialysis for five years, before I had a kidney and pancreas transplant. I've had two heart operations: it only works at 40%. I recently suffered three internal bleeds. And the legs are not there, of course, they have had to amputate them.
–And how do you swim and water pulley?
-I have the upper trunk.
I turn and look at Gasch, who is the coach of CNB Ability, the adapted water polo team in which Villapela plays, the embryo of an inclusive league in which CN Terrassa also competes and to which Mataró, CN Sabadell will be added , the UE Horta and, possibly, the CN Palamós.
–And how do you waterpole? I ask Gasch, the technician.
-He trains, everyone in the team trains, like a normal person. There are several weekly sessions. Villarrubia swims daily between 2,000 and 4,000 m. He does it in open water. We always accompany him two other swimmers.
–It is important that you accompany me because I don't have the rudder, the legs, and in the water I drift. Even so, a few years ago we entered the water at the Fòrum and came out at the W hotel. It's 6.5 kilometers, more or less, says Villarrubia.
"And on another occasion we crossed the Strait of Gibraltar," adds Gasch. And what we have left to do! Because a few weeks ago, when he was hospitalized, my friend Villapela sent me an audio saying goodbye. And I don't go there.
And Villapela shrugs his shoulders and stands on his crutch and says:
"Tomorrow we swim, huh?"
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