Luis Rubiales, who resigned as Spain’s high soccer official after he forcibly kissed a participant, testified at his sexual assault trial on Tuesday that he did in order an indication of affection in “a state of affairs of extraordinary pleasure.”
Mr. Rubiales has additionally been charged with coercion in reference to the episode, by which he pressed a kiss on the participant, Jennifer Hermoso, on the sector in the course of the medal ceremony after Spain gained the 2023 Girls’s World Cup.
Mr. Rubiales denied doing something mistaken in the course of the encounter with Ms. Hermoso. Talking in a courtroom close to Madrid, he mentioned, “You don’t win a World Cup day-after-day,” and he added that he had kissed different gamers in celebratory moments.
He additionally mentioned that he had requested for permission earlier than kissing Ms. Hermoso, describing it as a peck. “I requested her, ‘Can I provide you with a little bit kiss?’ and she or he mentioned, ‘OK,’” he advised a prosecutor. Ms. Hermoso said shortly after the episode that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
“I couldn’t react — it was a thousandth of a second,” she later testified, including that she had recognized instantly that the act was not regular.
“My boss was kissing me,” she mentioned. “This could not occur.”
The kiss, and the following fallout, turned a second of reckoning within the nation in addition to within the sport, pitting a tradition of machismo in opposition to more moderen progress in gender equality in Spanish soccer.
Mr. Rubiales, 47, faces two and a half years in jail if convicted. Three different males, together with Jorge Vilda, the team’s coach at the World Cup, are accused of coercion, with prosecutors saying that they pressured Ms. Hermoso to drop her declare and downplay the incident. Every may face 18 months.
The trial opened final week with the testimony of Ms. Hermoso, 34, who described the kiss because the second that “ruined one of many happiest days of my life.”
Ms. Hermoso, who performs in Mexico, additionally testified that high soccer officers had pressured her to say that Mr. Rubiales had completed nothing mistaken.
Ms. Hermoso was left off the Spain crew after the episode, however on Monday the present head coach of the Spain girls’s crew, Montse Tomé, testified that Ms. Hermoso’s exclusion “was not a punishment.”
Ms. Tomé, who turned the crew’s coach in September 2023 after Mr. Vilda was fired, appeared on the courtroom close to Madrid as a witness for the protection.
In August 2023, Ms. Tomé and 10 different members of the Spain girls’s teaching workers revealed a collective assertion condemning Mr. Rubiales’s “unacceptable attitudes and actions.”
Ms. Tomé’s appointment as Mr. Vilda’s successor, nevertheless, was seen by some as a continuation of the previous management. She had labored with Mr. Vilda as his assistant and ordered gamers to attend coaching camp. She was additionally seen by players as providing little sensible help for Ms. Hermoso and ignoring requires structural change within the soccer federation.
Ms. Hermoso, throughout her testimony, mentioned that the federation had all however deserted her after her complaints. She mentioned that officers needed solely “to avoid wasting their fame.”
Within the instant aftermath of the kiss, Mr. Rubiales provided a tepid apology and resisted calls to resign. The Spanish soccer federation launched a press release that quoted Ms. Hermoso calling the kiss “a completely spontaneous mutual gesture.” Throughout her testimony, Ms. Hermoso mentioned that she had by no means permitted the assertion.
Amid mounting strain and waning help, Mr. Rubiales resigned as head of the nationwide soccer group, the Royal Spanish Soccer Federation, in September 2023.
