Rafa Mir chose trial over a plea deal that would have kept him out of prison, rejecting the offer before the oral hearing at the Audiencia Provincial de Valencia. The move leaves him facing a far heavier legal risk: a possible sentence of 10 years and 6 months if the court accepts the prosecution case in full.

The timing matters because the offer came on 28 May, just before the hearing began, when the Fiscalía was pressing for 9 years in prison for sexual assault and 18 months for injuries. Under the proposed pact, the punishment would have fallen to less than 2 years and civil compensation would have dropped from 74,000 euros to 50,000 euros. In other words, Mir passed on a deal that would have avoided prison and taken a large part of the sentence off the table.

That decision puts his name at the center of a case already built on sharply different versions of the night. The prosecution says Mir met a 21-year-old woman in the exclusive room of Discoteca Mya and later continued the night at a chalet in Urbanización Torre in Conil with Pablo Jara and Bartolomé. The woman says Mir picked her up “como un bebé,” threw her clothed into the pool, blocked her from getting out, touched her body and put his fingers in her vagina.

The defense answered with two videos shown by Jaime Campaner, both recorded by Bartolomé, a military friend of Mir who was with him that night. Campaner summed up that line of attack with a blunt phrase: “Dato mata a relato.” The videos were presented as support for acquittal, but the complaint remains centered on the woman’s account that she was forced first in the pool and later in a bathroom when, she says, Mir grabbed her hard, locked the door, kissed her again and repeated the sexual acts.

On paper, the choice looks simple: accept a reduced deal and avoid jail, or gamble on trial and fight the allegations in public. Mir chose the second path. What the court makes of the two videos, and whether they outweigh the testimony that drives the case, will do more than decide one hearing in Valencia; it will determine whether his decision was a show of confidence or the most expensive refusal of his career.