Born in France. Are her parents both Portuguese? Tell us a little about the family.
My father, Miguel Tavares, is Portuguese, my mother is French and her name is Véronique. My father emigrated to France, worked at the FNAC store and met my mother through friends. When I was little, my mother worked as a seamstress. I have two brothers, I am the middle one.
Did it give your parents a lot of headaches?
[Risos] Too many. The three of us were terrible, especially me and my older brother, we played a lot of pranks.
Tell us a story that you still remember at family lunches today.
In the summer, we would go by bus from Tours to Porto, with my paternal grandparents, because my father’s family is from Castelo de Paiva. Once, my brother and I were playing with some cousins and my brother was jumping and ended up breaking his tongue in two. He had to go to the hospital and be cooked. When my parents arrived my mother asked if we were ok, I replied “yes” and my brother started to answer “hum, hum” [risos]. I spoke badly, because of the language and my mother, who didn’t know anything yet: “Speak properly, if you don’t speak well, you’ll be beaten” [risos]. We still laugh about it today.
When you came to Portugal on vacation, what did you like the most?
When we were children, we thought life in Portugal was the best in the world because we arrived in the summer, there was a lot of family, it was just dinners, barbecues, the beach, there was no school, we just played with our cousins and everyone was always happy. We thought it was like this all year round, in Portugal [risos]. As the years go by, we realize that we only caught the good phase of Portugal.
What did you say you wanted to be when you grew up?
I do not remember very well. Maybe a veterinarian because I was very fond of animals.
Did you like school?
No. He wasn’t a good student, he just liked going there to play.
Missed classes to go play ball?
It was missing, yes, but I didn’t play ball, I played basketball. I started playing football much later. The first sport I played was basketball. Then my hometown basketball club closed and I had to find another option. Two of my friends went to soccer and I said I was going too. I started playing football like that. I was about 14 years old. From there, everything went very quickly. First I was at a club in a village near Tours. There was a detection program to select the best players and make a team from the region. And in the first year I joined that team.
