Antonio Reig Ventura, Rovelleta living legend of the Valencian pilot, died on Sunday night at the age of 92 in her home on Pelayo Street in Valencia. Tonín lived there, right next to the Pelayo trinquet, the sanctum sanctorum of the Valencian pilota, a sports venue in operation since 1868 that for this sport, with eight centuries of history in Valencian lands, has been like uniting Madison Square Garden, Maracanà, Las Ventas, the Circus Maximus and La Scala in Milan .
There, in the Cathedral, at only fifteen years old, was where Rovellet, the son of Rovell from Dénia, debuted as a pilot on May 15, 1947. That was a post-war Valencia. A city with a ration card, a black market, shoe shiners in the Plaza del Caudillo, linguistic repression of Valencian and signs prohibiting blaspheming and playing ball in the street. And in that scenario, moving on the trinquet slabs like a juggler defying the laws of gravity in the reboundsRovellet dominated the Valencian pilota for a quarter of a century. Always with a comb in your pocket.
In the middle of the game, Rovellet entered the locker room and combed his hair. His clothing always looked immaculate white under the red faixa that distinguishes the champion. He was elegance personified in form and substance. Never a foul word, a shout or an insult. Rovellet was the perfect portrait of the knight of the Valencian pilota, perhaps the last sport where players still raise their hands today and recognize a foul themselves without the need for VAR and Hawkeyes or the mischievous temptation of cheating or deception, even if there are titles or money in dispute. in gambling, known as traverses. Always honesty ahead. The nobility. The value of the word and integrity. That’s why they call it joc de cavallers.
And among all the knights Rovellet stood out, extending his professional career until he was 47 years old – in 1979, already in democracy and at the gates of the autogovern– without ever having been injured. That is the man whose earthly goodbye leaves the chair of Pelayo. The pilotari who personified a València in extinction from that Pelayo street, the chinatown of the capital of Túria where today one hears more people speaking in Chinese than in Valencian and where the tourist apartments outnumber the family houses that are passed down from parents to children, like that home at number 8 from which little Tonín watched, enthralled, the flight of the cow pilot in the games of Quart, Mora, Llíria or Lloco, a golden era for the Valencian pilot. His goodbye, which closes a bitter trilogy with the disappearance of Juliet d’Alginet in 2015 and Paco Cabanes, the Genoesein 2021, fuels melancholy for a sport as proud of its past as it is fearful of its professional future.
One of many days, in Pelayo, I told Rovellet that my great-uncles had been the Viguer brothers. He knew them well. It is a curious story from the 50s that reflects the charm and unfair bad reputation that surrounded the Valencian pilot for decades. It turns out that the Viguer’s youngest, Paco, had gotten hooked on the pilot and went to Pelayo every week. His mother, Rafaela, became distraught. I saw it as a vice. A danger. The specter of ruin due to gambling hovered above. That’s why he sent his two older brothers, Germán and Juanjo, to Pelayo with a mission: to get his brother Paco out of the trinquet and convince him that piloting was a waste of time and money.
That was the intention. Who could imagine the outcome.
Who could have foreseen that Germán and Juanjo would be magnetized by the charisma of Rovellet and the historical strength of Pelayo and that they would never abandon the trinquet. The three. They would hang photos of Germán with Rovellet in Pelayo’s bar. Juanjo would continue to be mentioned for many years by older fans when a ball went wide.through Juanjo’s gallery“, the long gallery of Pelayo. And for Paco, who was taken by asthma at the age of 47, the cathedral public dedicated a minute of silence.
That minute of silence will sound unrepeatable when this week it is dedicated in so many places, and especially in Pelayo, to Rovellet, who will be buried this Tuesday in the municipal cemetery of Valencia (4:00 p.m.). Who knows if they’ll put a comb in his pocket. Everything is possible. He was once asked why he returned the ball into the air without letting it bounce when it hit the ground. drumyes it was more difficult that way. He responded as only Fausto Coppi, Bobby Fischer, Nadia Comaneci, Ayrton Senna, Joe Frazier or George Best could have done. Rovellet said: “Everyone does the other thing. I have to do something different.”
