Focus on…Canary Islands. When padel goes to the islands

This weekend, the CUPRA FIP Tour has scheduled the FIP Rise Aquahobby Isla de la Palma, which will be played in Los llanos de Aridane. This is the 14th tournament of the CUPRA FIP Tour in the autonomous community of the Canary Islands (the first, FIP Star Gran Canaria, was played in 2020), showing how much the autonomous federation of this territory has always believed in the development of this sport at both national and international level. The winners, four years ago, were Mario Del Castillo and Javier Perez among the men, while among the women were Argentina’s Virginia Riera and Portugal’s Sofia Araujo, who recently resumed playing as a pair and are currently number 12 and number 9 in the FIP ranking.

In the tournaments played in the Canary Islands between 2022 and 2023 (FIP Star Gran Canaria in August 2022, FIP Rise Tenerife in November 2022 and FIP Rise Isla de la Palma in March 2023), among others, a historic hat-trick by the home favourites Isabel Rapisarda Calvo (born in Las Palmas) and Clara Teresa Siverio Trujillo, from Tenerife. Two more tournaments of the CUPRA FIP Tour are currently planned for this year in the Canary Islands, both in ‘combined’ mode: the FIP Star Gran Canaria during the August holiday period and the FIP Rise in Fuerteventura between late August and early September.

According to the data base of the FEP (Federación Española de Padel), the Federacion Canaria de Padel presided over by Diego Miguel Gil Acosta is the fifth largest autonomous federation in terms of professional licences in Spain, with 6,246 players, an absolute record number of annual licences for this federation, plus 26 national referee licences and 16 affiliated clubs. In the entire autonomous community of the Canary Islands, according to data from the FIP Research & Data Analysis Department, there are an estimated more than 180 facilities where padel can be played (between clubs and accommodations) and more than 650 courts. Among the Canary Islands’ most representative players in the world are Carla Mesa (born in 1991, from Tenerife) currently number 36 in the FIP ranking, Diego Gil (1998, from Las Palmas) number 68, and Inigo Jofre (2000, born in Santander but raised in Santa Cruz de Tenerife), one of this year’s surprises, who reached the round of 16 of the Ooredoo Qatar Major in Doha and rose to number 76 in the FIP ranking.