Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspondent
Sun, 27 August 2023
Photograph: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images
When Jenni Hermoso arrived in the stands, the standing ovation was thundering. On the field below, Atlético de Madrid and AC Milan were battling it out for the Women’s Cup, but the message – scrawled on posters, temporary tattoos and a metres-long banner unfurled by the players – was unanimous at the stadium in Madrid on Saturday night: “We’re with you, Jenni Hermoso.”
It was a hint of how the tumultuous events of the past week since La Roja’s dazzling World Cup win have supercharged the long-running battle for equality in women’s football. As the hashtag #SeAcabó, meaning “it’s over”, was embraced from Sevilla to Santander, it was clear that Spanish football’s #MeToo moment had arrived.
After years of pushing for change, Spain’s players were eager to seize on the momentum. “Grandma, tell me about how your team won the World Cup,” read an illustration posted on social media by La Roja’s Misa Rodríguez on Friday. The grandmother answers: “We didn’t just win the World Cup, little one. We won so much more.”
Hours earlier, Luis Rubiales, the embattled head of the Spanish football federation, had lashed out at “fake feminism” and bemoaned what he called a “social assassination” in the reaction to his grabbing Hermoso by the head and kissing her on the lips during the medal ceremony at the World Cup. On Saturday, Fifa suspended Rubiales for 90 days, ordering both him and the federation to stay away from Hermoso and those close to her.
The backlash against Rubiales’ conduct was swift. The World Cup champions said they would not play for the national team until the federation’s leadership was removed. More than 50 other female players said the same. On Saturday, nearly all of the coaching and technical staff for Spain’s women’s team resigned, joining the seven members of the Spanish football federation who reportedly responded to Rubiales’ speech with their resignation.
“In six days, feminism swept Rubiales away,” the El País journalist Isabel Valdés wrote on social media. “In six days #SeAcabó has replaced the kiss that Hermoso never consented to.”
Condemnations of Rubiales’ behaviour cut across political lines. The country’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called the kiss an “unacceptable gesture”, while the country’s acting equality minister, Podemos’s Irene Montero, described it as a “form of sexual violence that we women suffer on a daily basis and until now has been invisible”.
The conservative People’s party, criticised by women’s groups for allowing the anti-feminist far right to gain a foothold in local and regional governments across Spain, also weighed in.
Related: A revolution 40 years in the making: how the Spanish women’s team fought back
“Spaniards don’t deserve this,” the party’s Cuca Gamarra told broadcaster Antena 3. “It’s a global embarrassment for the whole country and is tarnishing the incredible victory of a group of women who should be the only protagonists.”
Across Spain, many sought to broaden the conversation. No longer was this only the story of a team that had long wrestled with the perception that the federation saw them as less worthy than their male counterparts; what had played out on the world stage was a power imbalance that hit home for many.
“To all the guys who are stunned by the reaction against Rubiales; it’s because this has happened to all of us,” the journalist Irantzu Varela wrote on social media. “With our boss, with our client, with our teacher, with our friend, with a stranger, with you?”
Rubiales initially dismissed his critics as “idiots and stupid people” and later offered an apology that was widely seen as half-hearted. As the uproar continued, he changed tack on Friday and sought to portray the kiss as consensual, claiming that he had asked Hermoso if he could give her a peck and that she had replied “OK.”
Hermoso rejected any suggestion that the kiss was consensual. She described Rubiales’ words as “categorically false” and said the “conversation did not happen”.
Rubiales offered up the claim as he insisted he would stay on as president of the federation. “I will not resign,” he said repeatedly, his defiance earning hearty applause among the federation members in attendance, including Jorge Vilda, the coach of the Spanish women’s national team, and the men’s national team coach, Luis de la Fuente.
Natalia Torrente, the editor of sports website Relevo, said the reaction from the federation – which counts just six women among its 140 members – to Rubiales’ refusal to resign offered a glimpse of the deep-rooted systemic issues that female players have long faced.
“Five times he shouted it, clinging a little tighter to his position in each sentence, and shattering what little dignity he had left as an institutional representative,” she said in a piece that described Rubiales as a “global embarrassment”.
On Saturday, both Vilda and de la Fuente sought to distance themselves from Rubiales, issuing statements criticising his actions. Spanish media described their U-turns as a sign that Rubiales was becoming increasingly isolated from those who had long protected him. The country’s most powerful football clubs, from Real Madrid to Barcelona, have also condemned Rubiales’ behaviour.
On Sunday, as the Spanish government promised to continue its efforts to have Rubiales removed from the federation, women across the country called for the battle to continue.
“Despite Rubiales’ attempts to gaslight all of the women in this country, let’s show that we’re a society that refuses to take a step backwards,” Patricia Moreno wrote in Vogue España. “Our World Cup champions will thus have achieved something even more historic than a sporting title: the fall of a man who believed he was invincible.”
MACHISMO KULTURE
We asked people in Madrid what they thought of World Cup kiss row - their response was 'eye-opening'
Sky News
Updated Mon, 28 August 2023
The fallout from that kiss at the World Cup winning ceremony has overshadowed Spain's win and sparked a national debate.
The story has been hugely inflamed by the subsequent behaviour of Luis Rubiales, the man who planted the unwanted kiss and the recently suspended boss of Spanish football.
He's declared himself the victim of a witch hunt and Spain's FA threatened the player he kissed, Jenni Hermoso, with legal action for declaring the act non-consensual.
In Madrid, many people we spoke to think Mr Rubiales does not deserve the backlash he's received.
In Plaza de Santa Ana, a busy square in the city centre where locals and visitors enjoy early evening drinks, a group of young women did not want to be identified and were reluctant to speak up on the story.
However they said the response to Mr Rubiales and the kiss has been overblown.
We approached another larger group of men and women and we found a similar opinion among them.
Read more:
Who is Luis Rubiales?
Who said what in World Cup kissing row
Spanish FA calls 'extraordinary' meeting
Maria Gomez was among the group. She told me: "It is not appropriate that he [Rubiales] has done this, but as for the reaction, it does not seem to me, that the situation is that bad."
Her 14-year-old son Alexander Herranz agrees. He thinks Rubiales should face some form of sanction but shouldn't have to resign.
Their friend Vali Popa added: "I think it was exaggerated. It was just a moment of happiness and to celebrate it was nothing more than that."
The only dissenting voice at the table was Astrid Guerra. When I asked her whether Rubiales should go, she gave me a one word answer: "Completely".
By no means is my relatively brief spell in Plaza de Santa Ana a reliable representation of the sentiment of the Spanish people - and clearly there are many differing opinions - but it was eye-opening.
Clearly this is a divisive story and wherever it goes, people won't be able to agree on what was the right action to take.
UEFA rejects Spanish expulsion plea as Luis Rubiales crisis takes bizarre new twist
Miguel Delaney
Mon, Aug 28, 2023
UEFA will take no action over an astonishing request by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) to be expelled over the Luis Rubiales crisis, as the federation president now faces an investigation from Spanish prosecutors for sexual assault.
In other developments of a story that even UEFA officials were describing as “absurd” and “stranger by the moment”, Rubiales’s mother Angeles Bejar locked herself in a church to go on hunger strike, before police and doctors eventually intervened. Such details have stunned even the most experienced people in football, but it is the request to the European body that is being seen as the most significant, given it sums up how surreal the story has become.
With Rubiales facing a series of official complaints and a government process that could yet see him banned from sport in Spain for two to 15 years – to go with his current 90-day suspension from Fifa – the federation sent a request to Uefa to be expelled for breaking UEFA's own statutes on state interference. Expulsion would see clubs including Real Madrid and Barcelona kicked out of European competitions such as the Champions League.
The move has been interpreted as “bluster” and “brinkmanship” by the federation in order to support Rubiales, but it would still involve all of Spain’s club and national teams being removed from competition, depriving them of income and – in the words of one party – “setting Spanish football back years”. The Independent has been told that Uefa will not take action and that the government’s involvement does not meet the criteria for state interference.
Spain’s players and coaches celebrate their World Cup win – as Luis Rubiales (second left) joins in (Getty)
Victor Francos, the president of Spain’s Higher Council for Sport who has become a central figure in this situation, stated on Monday that all of the relevant bodies are “acting within the regulations as they stand”. Rubiales being punished according to regulations and rules is different to the government just ousting him, which it cannot do, although it has created an almost Kafkaesque circus over what remains a serious issue.
Underpinning it all has been the Spanish government’s willingness to act on issues of equality and sexual harassment.
The country’s prosecutor’s office will ask World Cup winner Jenni Hermoso if she wishes to press charges against Rubialies after she stated that their kiss on the lips following Spain’s 1-0 win over England eight days ago was not consensual. It was that statement which led Rubiales’s mother to go on hunger strike in a church in his home town in Montril, demanding that Hermoso “tell the truth” about the incident. There have also been public accusations from one of Rubiales’s cousins that the Spanish midfielder changed her story – something that did not happen. All of this comes amid FIFA's directive that Rubiales not contact Hermoso or her family.
Spain’s Administrative Court of Sport (TAD) has meanwhile been meeting all Monday to examine four complaints against Rubiales. Should it decide to open proceedings, it could mean the official is suspended for even longer than Fifa's 90-day provisional punishment.
In that event, the Spanish government has confirmed it would take action.
“If the court upholds the complaint and begins to process that case, we can request the provisional suspension of the president of the RFEF until TAD finishes analysing it and takes their decision,” sports minister Miquel Iceta said on Friday.
Also on Monday morning, the Spanish player’s union Futpro – representing Jenni Hermoso – further clarified Hermoso’s stance while describing a “structural problem” in the Spanish federation. In a video statement prior to meeting with union officials, Yolanda Diaz, deputy prime minister in the acting Socialist government, said that Rubiales’s defiance and the support from some federation members showed that macho behaviour was systematic in Spanish society.
“What footballer Jenni Hermoso experienced should never have happened,” Ms Diaz said. “Those who applauded Rubiales [at the assembly], in my opinion, should not continue in their positions.”
While Rubiales’s position as vice-president of Uefa has itself led to criticism of the European body for a lack of comment, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has been in constant contact with Fifa. The position is that since the events fall under the disciplinary jurisdiction of Fifa – because the World Cup was a Fifa event – it was agreed that Fifa’s disciplinary bodies would handle the case, something Uefa does not feel it should comment on.
The global football representative body FifPro is meanwhile yet to receive an official response from Uefa to a letter sent on Friday requesting disciplinary action against Rubiales.
Miguel Delaney
Mon, Aug 28, 2023
UEFA will take no action over an astonishing request by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) to be expelled over the Luis Rubiales crisis, as the federation president now faces an investigation from Spanish prosecutors for sexual assault.
In other developments of a story that even UEFA officials were describing as “absurd” and “stranger by the moment”, Rubiales’s mother Angeles Bejar locked herself in a church to go on hunger strike, before police and doctors eventually intervened. Such details have stunned even the most experienced people in football, but it is the request to the European body that is being seen as the most significant, given it sums up how surreal the story has become.
With Rubiales facing a series of official complaints and a government process that could yet see him banned from sport in Spain for two to 15 years – to go with his current 90-day suspension from Fifa – the federation sent a request to Uefa to be expelled for breaking UEFA's own statutes on state interference. Expulsion would see clubs including Real Madrid and Barcelona kicked out of European competitions such as the Champions League.
The move has been interpreted as “bluster” and “brinkmanship” by the federation in order to support Rubiales, but it would still involve all of Spain’s club and national teams being removed from competition, depriving them of income and – in the words of one party – “setting Spanish football back years”. The Independent has been told that Uefa will not take action and that the government’s involvement does not meet the criteria for state interference.
Spain’s players and coaches celebrate their World Cup win – as Luis Rubiales (second left) joins in (Getty)
Victor Francos, the president of Spain’s Higher Council for Sport who has become a central figure in this situation, stated on Monday that all of the relevant bodies are “acting within the regulations as they stand”. Rubiales being punished according to regulations and rules is different to the government just ousting him, which it cannot do, although it has created an almost Kafkaesque circus over what remains a serious issue.
Underpinning it all has been the Spanish government’s willingness to act on issues of equality and sexual harassment.
The country’s prosecutor’s office will ask World Cup winner Jenni Hermoso if she wishes to press charges against Rubialies after she stated that their kiss on the lips following Spain’s 1-0 win over England eight days ago was not consensual. It was that statement which led Rubiales’s mother to go on hunger strike in a church in his home town in Montril, demanding that Hermoso “tell the truth” about the incident. There have also been public accusations from one of Rubiales’s cousins that the Spanish midfielder changed her story – something that did not happen. All of this comes amid FIFA's directive that Rubiales not contact Hermoso or her family.
Spain’s Administrative Court of Sport (TAD) has meanwhile been meeting all Monday to examine four complaints against Rubiales. Should it decide to open proceedings, it could mean the official is suspended for even longer than Fifa's 90-day provisional punishment.
In that event, the Spanish government has confirmed it would take action.
“If the court upholds the complaint and begins to process that case, we can request the provisional suspension of the president of the RFEF until TAD finishes analysing it and takes their decision,” sports minister Miquel Iceta said on Friday.
Also on Monday morning, the Spanish player’s union Futpro – representing Jenni Hermoso – further clarified Hermoso’s stance while describing a “structural problem” in the Spanish federation. In a video statement prior to meeting with union officials, Yolanda Diaz, deputy prime minister in the acting Socialist government, said that Rubiales’s defiance and the support from some federation members showed that macho behaviour was systematic in Spanish society.
“What footballer Jenni Hermoso experienced should never have happened,” Ms Diaz said. “Those who applauded Rubiales [at the assembly], in my opinion, should not continue in their positions.”
While Rubiales’s position as vice-president of Uefa has itself led to criticism of the European body for a lack of comment, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has been in constant contact with Fifa. The position is that since the events fall under the disciplinary jurisdiction of Fifa – because the World Cup was a Fifa event – it was agreed that Fifa’s disciplinary bodies would handle the case, something Uefa does not feel it should comment on.
The global football representative body FifPro is meanwhile yet to receive an official response from Uefa to a letter sent on Friday requesting disciplinary action against Rubiales.
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