Tears, memories and some reproach in Alba Santana’s hardest trip

The plane flight between Amsterdam and Madrid takes just over two and a half hours. But, time seems to stop for Alba Santana, who is still trapped in her memories and lamenting the missed opportunities.

As she travels the distance between his adopted country, Holland, and Madrid, a city that pays tribute to her father, Manolo santana, today in the Magic Box, memories pile up.

Relive the happy times she lived in Marbella with her father and her third wife, Otti Glanzielus, and the hard times she spent in Madrid, a city that inevitably associates with his mother, Mila Ximenez, removes her feelings. Although she usually restrains herself, tears well up in her eyes.

Both of them, Mila and Manolo have died just six months apart, leaving Alba an orphan and with the pain of not having been able to say goodbye to her father as she wanted. Just as with her mother she reproached herself for not being aware of the little time she had left, she is comforted by having been able to shake her hand with her last breath.

Mila, who had tried to avoid suffering as much as possible, she called her when she made the tough decision to sedate. She wanted to say goodbye to all her loved ones, looking into their eyes and transmitting all her love and much peace.

Her father, whom she has not seen for almost a decade, she has not been able to give her a hug or say goodbye in person, which makes the loss even harder.

Distanced from her father since her divorce from Otti Glanzielus and after the television rebirth of Mila Ximénez

The distance that settled between father and daughter coincides with the beginning of Manolo’s sentimental relationship with his last wife, Claudia Rodríguez, shortly after her wedding with Avid Mirón in June 2006 and in the midst of a television revival of Mila Ximénez.

Although it is not known what it was that dynamited the paternofilial union, the arrival of Claudia Rodríguez to the tennis player’s life and the closeness of Alba to her mother, made a dent in the relationship between the young businesswoman and Manolo Santana.

Journalist Mila Ximénez and tennis player Manolo Santana with their daughter Alba Santana.

Alba, the champion’s favorite daughter, was one of the victims of Mila’s brutal attacks on the tennis player’s last wife. While Claudia decided to act civilly and criminally against Sálvame’s collaborator, Manolo trusted her daughter to mediate in the conflict that had arisen between the two women.

It was not easy to stop the anger of the gathering and not even Alba could do it, which would end up taking its toll. In fact, if Claudia has not withdrawn the proceedings against the deceased, it will be Alba, as her universal heir, who will have to respond to the possible civil liability of a posthumous conviction. A lawsuit that further separates the tennis player’s youngest daughter from Santana’s widow.

Alba leans on her siblings and her maternal uncles to overcome her sadness

Although, according to what has transpired, Alba knew the critical state in which her father was, a few days before his death, everything indicates that there was no reconciliation between them.

Nor, according to what has transpired, did the death of Mila Ximénez lead to what everyone expected: A call from Manolo to his daughter to accompany him in such difficult moments. If then you didn’t expect your mother to leave the year after the fatal diagnosis, Manolo Santana’s death has deprived her of that pending conversation and that last goodbye.

Manolo Ximenez and Alba Santana during the burial of Mila Ximenez in Madrid 23 June 2021.

The same has happened to her other three siblings: Manel, Borja, and Beatriz, children of the tennis player’s first wife, Fernanda Dopeso, who also had no relationship with her father since the relationship with the Colombian began.

She is the one who is blamed for the isolation of the tennis player in his last years of life, not only from her children, but also from many of her closest friends and collaborators.

Yes she could be with Barbara, the daughter that the tennis player had with a flight attendant and the closest in age to Alba. She, along with the widow, received the authorities and friends who came to the Marbella funeral home to offer their condolences and were very affectionate with each other.

Alba has been left orphaned of father and mother. Her siblings and maternal uncles, as well as Avid and her two sons, are the ones who help her cope with this loss when she has not yet overcome grief over the death of her mother.

Today, in the tribute paid to her father on the center court of the Magic Box that bears his name, Alba will meet her hero again, the man for whom she continues to feel the greatest admiration and respect.