Spanish Court Overturns Sexual Assault Conviction Against Barcelona Legend Dani Alves
Former Barcelona player Dani Alves won his appeal against a sexual assault conviction as a Spanish court overturned the ruling Friday.
Alves was found guilty in February 2024 of raping a woman in a nightclub in December 2022 and sentenced to four years, six months in prison. The former Brazil and Barcelona defender denied wrongdoing during the three-day trial.
That court ruled Friday that there was “insufficient evidence” to rule out Alves’ presumption of innocence.
The Alves trial was the first high-profile case since Spain overhauled its laws in 2022 to make consent central to defining a sex crime in response to an upswell of protests after a gang-rape case during the San Fermin bull-running festival in Pamplona in 2016.
The legislation popularly known as the “only yes means yes” law defines consent as an explicit expression of a person’s will, making it clear that silence or passivity do not equal consent.
Alves, now 41,
