She once held the No. After a friend introduced her to badminton, she fell in love with the sport and decided to stop dancing and play badminton wholeheartedly. She had to leave her hometown and her family at a very young age to travel all the way to Madrid for training at the National Centre. In , she became the first Spanish badminton player to win a silver medal first, at the European Junior Championships , and also in the same year, won the gold medal at the European U Junior Championships.
In , she won the All England Open , her first Superseries Premier title in her first Superseries Premier final after defeating Saina Nehwal in the final with score 16β21, 21β14, 21β7. In August, she represented her country at the Rio Olympics. She arrived at Rio as the number one seed and won a gold medal by beating India's P. Sindhu in the women's singles final with a score of 19β21, 21β12, 21β She made history by becoming the first non-Asian to win the Olympic badminton women's singles gold medal.
On 29 April , she won her fourth consecutive European Championships title in her home soil Huelva, Spain, by beating Evgeniya Kosetskaya with a score of 21β15, 21β7 in the final. Sindhu of India in straight games 21β19, 21β10, making her the first female player in history to win three World Championships titles.
She reached the final of the French Open next week, where she was defeated by Korean youngster An Se-young in three games 21β16, 18β21, 5β Her achievements in the last three tournaments succeeded in bringing her back into the world top 10 of BWF women's singles ranking.
A week later, she then reached the final of the Indonesia Masters , where she narrowly missed the title after getting defeated from Ratchanok Intanon in three games 19β21, 21β11, 18β She didn't lose any game in the whole tournament. Sindhu with a very dominating display, winning 21β12, 21β5. There, she lost again to Chen Yufei with an 18β21, 19β21 scoreline, mirroring their Malaysia Open match result.
