Sunday, May 4, 2025, 16:23
| Updated 17: 41h.
Real Madrid and Spanish basketball in general are mourning for the loss of one of their referents in a crucial era to understand their subsequent evolution. Rafa Rullán, an interior historical of the white team for 18 seasons between 1969 and 1987, died this Sunday in Madrid at age 73, after a long illness.
His extensive stage in the Madrid basketball section marked a milestone, which only Sergio Llull, another Balearic, has been able to beat so many years later. In Blanco conquered 14 leagues, 9 cups, 1 Super Cup of Spain, 3 European Cups, 1 Europe and 4 Intercontinental Cups, currently unthinkable records. In total 32 official trophies, a dizzy fact that only exceeds another legend of the club as Clifford Luyk, with 33 titles to his credit.
Beyond the records, Rullán also advanced some of the characteristics of the basketball of the future, because despite being a 2.07 pivot, he was one of the first interior players that developed his half and long distance shot. To this virtue of the sport of the basket in our days the Mallorcan linked an interesting play repertoire to the post, with the classic hooks of the time and the ability to rebound that they made it indispensable for the Madrid of the seventies, a team that dominated with iron fist in Spain.
The historic technician Pedro Ferrándiz recruited Rullán for the lower categories of Madrid in 1967, when he was only 15 years old but had already emerged in his native Mallorca for his height and his skills for basketball. The first team of the basketball section arrived in 1969, at 17, also thanks to the clinical eye of Alicante, his coach in his first six campaigns in the capital of Spain, in which the white team conquered all the leagues and glasses at stake, in addition to the 1974 Europe titles in final paths.
In 1975 Lolo Sainz assumed Ferrándiz’s witness at the head of Real Madrid and, with Rullán settled in the White squad, during this stage he not only lasted the classic merengue dominance in Spanish basketball, but also two other European glasses arrived, the sixth in 1978, again with the varse Classic rival, the MacCabi of Tel Aviv, with 27 points of the Mallorcan player.
Rullán, perfectly recognizable for his iconic and populated beard, reached the Captaincy of the White Team in 1983, a role he exercised during his last four seasons in Real Madrid, marked by physical problems. He added to his record three leagues (1984, 1985 and 1986) and two more glasses (1985 and 1986), although in 1985 he escaped the one that would have been eighth European European Cup, in a final that crowned the zagreb cyber of the dazzling Drazen Petrovic, which a few years later would also dress in white.
Multiple roles
Rullán left Madrid in 1987, after 18 consecutive campaigns in the club, and extended his career one more course, 1987-88, in Bacobao Villalba, then in the ACB League and shortly thereafter converted by Jesús Gil into a basketball section of Atlético de Madrid. He retired as a player in 1988 and throughout his brilliant career he was 162 times international with the Spanish team, with which he participated in the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 and conquered the silver medal in the 1973 European.
It would soon return to what was always his house, as he exercised as a delegate of the first Real Madrid team between 1991 and 1999. He was subsequently responsible for the section, he directed the sports schools of the club’s foundation and also presided over the Association of Veterans of White Basketball.
“Real Madrid wants to express their condolences and love to their relatives, to their peers and all their loved ones, and make their condolences extended to all Real Madrid,” said the Chamartín club in his official statement, in which he recalled the multiple achievements throughout the extensive sports career of this historic captain of the section.
«A legend of national basketball has died today in Madrid on the occasion of the disease he suffered in recent years. The Spanish Basketball Federation wishes to express its deepest condolences to family and friends thus adding to their pain. Rest in peace, ”said the Feb, also of mourning for goodbye to a Spanish basketball giant.
