The internet is calling out Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s soccer federation, after he kissed star midfielder Jenni Hermoso following the Spanish national team’s first-ever World Cup win over the weekend. In clips from the post-game celebrations, Rubiales can be seen kissing several other players on the face, not to mention grabbing his crotch in the crowd while 16-year-old Princess Infanta Sofía stood nearby.
Later, in the locker room, Hermoso’s teammates were heard “screaming and laughing” while watching replays of the kiss on a phone, per an Instagram video seen by The Associated Press and BBC. In the video Hermoso can reportedly be heard saying, “But I didn’t like it!”
Now Rubiales is being rightfully called out for his behavior, with the international players’ union deeming it “deeply lamentable” and Spain’s equality minister describing it as “sexual violence.”
The Spanish football federation then released a statement attributed to Hermoso, in which she referred to the kiss as a “totally spontaneous mutual gesture due to the immense joy of winning a World Cup.” She added, “The president and I have a great relationship, his behavior with all of us has been excellent, and it was a natural gesture of affection and gratitude.”
In a subsequent interview, Hermoso doubled down, reasserting that she was not offended by the kiss. “It was the emotion of the moment,” she remarked to Cadena COPE in an interview. “There’s nothing else there. It’s no big deal.”
Irene Montero, the country’s equality minister, however, disagreed. And she definitely has a point. This kind of behavior is totally unacceptable, even in the heat of an exciting moment. Plus, the power dynamic at play between players and Rubiales makes it virtually impossible for Hermoso to publicly express anything but positive feelings about the interaction.
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“Let’s not assume that giving a kiss without consent is something ‘that happens,’” Montero noted in a post shared to X (formerly known as Twitter), which Glamour translated from Spanish. “It is a form of sexual violence that women suffer on a daily basis and until now was invisible, and that we cannot normalize. It is the task of the whole society. Consent in the center. Only yes is yes.”
On Monday the federation released a video in which Rubiales offered an apology. “I made a mistake, for sure,” Rubiales said in Spanish, per Yahoo. “I have to accept it. In a moment of such emotion, without any bad intention or bad faith, what happened, happened, in a very spontaneous way.”
“We saw it as something natural and normal,” he continued. “But on the outside it has caused commotion, because people have felt hurt by it, so I have to apologize; there’s no alternative. I have to learn from this and understand that a president of an institution as important as the federation—above all in ceremonies and that kind of thing—should be more careful.”
The federation has not issued any punishment for Rubiales, despite the fact that “forced kisses” are considered “unacceptable conduct with immediate consequences” by the federation’s own sexual violence policy. Fans continue to call for his removal or resignation.
This is far from the first time that a male official or coach has been accused of sexual misconduct in women’s soccer. It was just eight months ago that four coaches were banned from the National Women’s Soccer League in the US after a report turned up allegations of sexual and emotional abuse across the league. And, as the AP reports, two national teams, Haiti and Zambia, dealt with allegations of misconduct while qualifying for this year’s World Cup. This systemic abuse makes Rubiales’s nonconsensual kiss all the more disturbing—especially because it happened on such a public stage. If this is what men think they can get away with while the whole world is watching, one can only imagine what happens when the cameras are off.
