Santi Mina given 10 days to prepare for four-year prison sentence

Former Celta Vigo forward Santi Mina has been given 10 days to present arguments before beginning a four-year prison sentence for sexual assault, according to Spanish newspaper AS.

The Third Section of the Almeria Court has asked Mina’s defence team to make submissions about the enforcement of the sentence. The conviction, relating to an incident in 2017, was confirmed as final by Spain’s Supreme Court.

Because the sentence is longer than two years, a standard suspension is not available. Once the latest procedure is completed, the next judicial step will be to issue an order allowing Mina to report voluntarily to the prison of his choice.

The court has also asked the former Spain Under-21 international to respond regarding compliance with a 12-year restriction preventing him from coming within 500 metres of the victim or contacting her by any means.

Mina was warned that failure to observe those conditions could constitute “a crime of breaching the sentence”.

The prosecution has also been given the opportunity to state how the €25,000 civil compensation award, imposed for moral damages, should be paid. The ruling upheld the acquittal of Mina’s former team-mate David Goldar.

Supreme Court rejects appeals

The enforcement process follows the Supreme Court’s criminal chamber confirming the conviction last September. The case concerns an assault on a woman in the early hours of 16 June 2017 inside a parked van near a nightclub in Mojacar, Almeria.

The Supreme Court rejected all 29 grounds raised by Mina’s defence. It said he had acted by “taking advantage of the victim’s confined and unusual space” and that he had been blocking the only exit while she was in a state of shock.

The judgment referred to a first “surprise” assault, which it said demonstrated the absence of consent, followed by a second assault carried out expressly “despite the victim’s lack of consent”.

The judges also rejected any suggestion that Mina had been mistaken about the woman’s wishes. The fact that he stopped when she asked him to, they said, “proves the moment when the act ended and explains why the court ruled out the use of violence or intimidation; it does not prove that the victim had previously consented or that the defendant believed she had consented”.

The ruling stated that the woman had suffered severe anxiety and depressive symptoms linked to the events, with a significant effect on her daily life and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

The court also rejected an appeal by the victim’s legal representatives, who had sought an eight-year sentence for Mina. Judges said the original ruling had not described the use of “coercive violence” to force the woman.

Mina’s name is also associated with Lionel Messi’s final appearance for Barcelona. Messi played his last match for the club on 16 May 2021 against Celta Vigo in La Liga.

Barcelona lost 2-1 at Camp Nou, despite Messi opening the scoring in the 28th minute. Mina equalised 10 minutes later and scored the winner in the 89th minute, ending Barcelona’s hopes of winning a second successive league title. Mina represented Spain at youth level through to Under-21s but never played for the senior team.