Miner´s son Villa voices relief at rescue in Chile

World Cup star David Villa, who comes from a coal mining family in northern Spain, Thursday expressed his joy at the rescue of the 33 trapped miners in Chile.

“I have lived with uncertainty, hoping that everything would turn out well. It seemed that the rescue equipment was perfect, but in these situations there can always be complications,” Villa told reporters.

“I’m happy that everything has gone well and everyone is now on the surface,” said the Barcelona striker, Spain’s top scorer in the World Cup in South Africa and who had sent two signed Barca shirts to the miners last month.

“I’ve lived around mining since I was a child. It’s always the same. Let’s see if this situation serves to improve infrastructure and that this sort of thing does not happen again,” said Villa, who comes from the town of Tuilla in the northern region of Asturias.

All 33 miners were winched up to the surface this week through a narrow escape shaft drilled into the bowels of a mountain in Chile’s Atacama desert where they were trapped on August 5.