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Luis Rubiales, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting the footballer Jenni Hermoso by kissing her on the lips after Spain’s women’s team won the World Cup.
Rubiales, who was acquitted of coercion, was ordered to pay a fine of more than €10,000. He was also ordered not to go within 200 metres of Hermoso for a year, and to refrain from contacting her for 12 months. Rubiales can appeal against the sentence before the same court.
The episode, which overshadowed the team’s triumph in August 2023 and prompted a national and international debate on sexism and consent, resulted in Hermoso receiving death threats and eventually led Rubiales to resign as the head of the federation.
Rubiales, 47, was accused of sexual assault and of coercing Hermoso to downplay what happened after the kiss made headlines around the world. Prosecutors had sought a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence – one year for sexual assault and 18 months for the alleged coercion.
Rubiales, a former player, has always insisted the kiss on Hermoso’s lips after the final in Sydney was consensual.
“I am absolutely sure that she gave me her permission,” Rubiales told the court in Madrid earlier this month. “In that moment it was something completely spontaneous.”
Three other people who had also been tried for allegedly pressuring Hermoso to say the kiss was consensual – the former head coach of the women’s national team Jorge Vilda; the former Spanish football federation sporting director Albert Luque; and the federation’s former marketing chief Rubén Rivera – were cleared of coercion.
Giving evidence on the first day of the trial at the national court in San Fernando de Henares, near Madrid, Hermoso said she had never consented to being kissed by Rubiales, adding that he had not sought her permission to do so.
“I felt it was totally out of place and I then realised my boss was kissing me, and this shouldn’t happen in any social or workplace setting,” she said. “I felt disrespected. One of the happiest days of my life was tarnished and I think it’s very important for me to say that I never sought, much less expected, that this would happen. I think personally that it was a lack of respect.”
Hermoso told the court the kiss and its fallout had turned her life upside down, and had severely affected her family.
“Obviously, even today, I say that my life changed at that moment,” she said. “I’d spent years fighting to win titles for my team, like the World Cup, but all that’s happened to me means that I just haven’t been able to enjoy any of it from the moment I set foot back in Madrid. I’m a world champion but it seems that, even to this day, my life has been on standby. I honestly haven’t been able to live freely.”
In his evidence, Rubiales acknowledged that he had made an error of judgment but maintained that the kiss had been consensual.
“It’s obvious now that I made a mistake,” he told the court. “It was spontaneous. I behaved like a sportsperson, like I was one more member of the team. I should have been more cold-blooded and adopted a more institutional role.”
Rubiales had denied trying to coerce Hermoso into making a statement playing down the incident, saying he had suggested they make a joint statement to calm the situation. Hermoso refused, but the federation still released a statement on her behalf.
The player said the statement made her feel “that I was participating in something I hadn’t done and in which I didn’t want to participate”. The court heard testimony from Hermoso’s brother Rafael, who said Vilda had asked him on the flight back from Australia to “convince” his sister to record a video with Rubiales to show she was not bothered by the kiss.
“The last thing Mr Vilda said to me was that we should bear in mind the professional and personal consequences that all this could have for my sister,” he added.
Hermoso’s teammate Misa Rodríguez told the court the striker was “under a lot of pressure” and “started crying” shortly after Rubiales talked to her on the plane.
The public prosecutor Marta Durántez Gil told the court the evidence against Rubiales was clear. “It was an unwanted kiss: I believe that after the examination carried out [during the trial], there is no doubt, or at least not sufficient reasonable doubt,” she said.
Rubiales had initially attempted to brush off the controversy, dismissing critics of his actions as “idiots and stupid people”. But the incident provoked global outrage, led to his being provisionally suspended by Fifa, and prompted Hermoso to make a criminal complaint accusing him of sexual assault.
Days later, amid mounting outrage over the kiss – as well as over Rubiales grabbing his crotch while standing next to Queen Letizia of Spain and her 16-year-old daughter, Infanta Sofía, as the team won the World Cup – the federation demanded that he resign.
It also sacked Vilda, who was one of many officials to have applauded a defiant speech Rubiales made to the federation in which he said “I will not resign” five times and hit out at “false feminism” while also seeking to portray himself as a victim and recast the kiss as “a peck”.
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