BARCELONA (Reuters) -Brazilian footballer Dani Alves was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on Thursday for sexually assaulting a woman in a Barcelona nightclub in 2022. The top court in Spain's Catalonia region also ordered Alves, who had maintained throughout that the sex was consensual, to pay 150,000 euros ($163,000) to the victim. "The sentence considers that it has been proven that the victim did not consent, and that there is evidence, in addition to the testimony of the plaintiff, to consider the rape proven," the court - the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona - said in a statement.
Barcelona and its surrounding in northeastern Spain’s Catalonia region are preparing for tighter water restrictions amid a historic drought that has shrunk reservoirs to record lows. Catalan authorities are expected to declare a drought emergency Thursday for an area that is home to 6 million people after water reserves fell below 16% of their capacity, the benchmark set for the application of a new round of water-saving measures.
A yearslong drought in Spain is prompting officials to issue stark warnings about the eventual need for emergency measures to conserve water while also uncovering long-lost structures built nearly 1,000 years ago. A recent video from AFP showed the ruins of an 11th-century church in the usually submerged Medieval village of Sant Roma de Sau. The church has been mostly underwater since the 1960s when the government of the Catalonia region created the Sau Reservoir on the site of the former town.