Good black short-sleeved cotton T-shirt, shorts and comfortable fabric, of the same color. The same as socks up to below the knees and sports shoes. On his head, with the visor pushed back, hiding some lush curls of very black hair, a crown cap for the former international soccer star, in prison since January 20 accused of raping a 23-year-old girl in a bathroom. from a private room at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. It is Monday, just a few hours before his first five months incarcerated in a cell in the Brians 2 prison in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires.
Dani Alves, (Juazeiro, Bahía, Brazil, May 6, 1983) waits for the person who signs, sitting cross-legged in booth number two of the Brians 2 communications module. It is almost four in the afternoon and the rest of booths are empty. He gets up, smiles, places his palm on the glass partition that separates us, and thanks the visit: “Thank you for being here.” The chronicler enters the prison with a bunch of blank pages inside a lilac folder and two blue-ink ballpoint pens, the kind that never fail or wear out. The prison management, previously informed of the meeting and of the journalist’s interest in reproducing the meeting in La Vanguardia, authorizes the communication. The man speaks.
“I have decided to give this interview, my first interview since I have been here, so that people know what I think. That they know the story from what I experienced that morning in that bathroom. Until now, a story has been explained very frightened with fear and terror, which has nothing to do with what happened, nor with what I did”.
-And why else do you decide to speak?
-To apologize to the only person I have to apologize to, which is my wife, Joana Sanz. The woman I married eight years ago, am still married to, and hope to live with all my life. I have already personally asked her for forgiveness here, in prison, but I must do it publicly, because the story is public, the offense is public and she deserves those public apologies. They have been, are being and will be very hard days for her. I appreciate all that she is doing for me. Her role is not easy. I love her and this time in prison I have thought a lot about our marriage. I am certain that I was not mistaken in choosing Joana as my wife. Although maybe she was wrong about me.
For almost two hours, Dani Alves answers all the questions I ask him. To questions and cross-questions based on his answers. The sound is regular, as always happens in prison call rooms, at least in the oldest ones in Catalonia, such as Brians 2. The inmate must keep the telephone close to his mouth and raise the tone, if he wants the sound to come through clearly on the other side of the screen.
His account of what happened that morning at Sutton is the one he told before the magistrate of Barcelona Court 15, the investigator of the proceedings, when on April 17 he was released and taken to the City of Justice to testify again, at your request. The defendant maintains that he previously agreed with the young woman that they would have sexual relations in the bathroom and that “everything that happened and did not happen there inside her is only known to her and me.”
But it says something more than what happened that early morning at the Tusset Street nightclub. “That morning, when the woman I have a problem with comes out of the bathroom behind me, I stay by my table for a while. I’m not there for a long time because it was late. I’m with my friend Bruno and other people approach me before I’m leaving. When I left the disco through the exit corridor, I learned from the images that I passed near where the woman is crying. I didn’t see her. If I had seen her cry, I would have stopped to ask what was happening. And at that moment, “If someone in charge of the disco had asked me to wait for me because a young woman claimed that I had sexually assaulted her, I’m not going home. That same night I show up at a police station to clarify what has happened.”
When did you find out that you had been denounced?
I think it was the next day. Because no one said anything to me there. I left the Sutton calm. I arrived at my house. I showered because my wife was already asleep and I was ashamed of the infidelity. I soaped up in anger. I lay down in another bed. He returned to Mexico two days later to play and in some media it was published that a young woman accused Dani Alves of sexual assault. I called my lawyer, Miraida Puentes, on the phone. She consulted with the Mossos and in the courts and assured me that there was no complaint and that she could travel and leave Spain with complete peace of mind. That’s why I left.
-They knew you in Sutton. It wasn’t the first time he went.
-Of course. Since 2008 it was a place I went to when I wanted to have a drink with my wife, with my friends. I know all the employees. To all. To those in charge of the room, waiters. To all the world. And I thought they appreciated me, really. None of them can say that in all these years I have been involved in not a single incident, not a single problem in that room. Not one. My behavior has always been exemplary. And that’s why I’ve known them for so many years, I still don’t understand how they acted that morning.
During the investigation of the investigation, now completed, all the workers and managers of the Sutton room who were there paraded first through the central sexual assault unit (UCAS) of the Mossos d’Esquadra and then through the investigative court number 15 of Barcelona. night they were at the disco and that they interacted with Alves or the victim. None considered asking the soccer player, a regular customer, to wait in an office, without coinciding with the young woman, for the arrival of the police, who were alerted through 112.
The interview with Dani Alves in La Vanguardia lasted more than an hour and a half. The player, accused of rape, talked about everything and a lot. Throughout the morning of this Wednesday we will publish the rest of the chronicles of the meeting in prison.
