Former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales has been found guilty of kissing Jenni Hermoso during the 2023 women’s World Cup trophy presentation without her consent by a Spanish high court.
Rubiales, 47, has been ordered to pay a fine of €20 per day for the next 18 months – a total sum of £8,250 – and cannot go within 200 metres of the striker.
Prosecutors are seeking two and a half years in prison against Rubiales for sexual assault for the forced kiss and allegedly coercing Hermoso to downplay the incident. But he has avoided a custodial sentence in addition to being acquitted on the charge of coercion.
His three co-defendants former Spain boss Jorge Vilda, Albert Luque and Rubén Rivera were also found not guilty of the charge.
Rubiales stood accused of sexual assault and coercion for allegedly trying to downplay the kiss that sparked outrage in Spain and around the world and marred the celebrations of the team’s first World Cup title.
Earlier this month, told the court he was ‘totally sure’ Hermoso consented to him kissing her on the lips after Spain won the World Cup.
Former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales has been found guilty of kissing Jenni Hermoso without her consent
Rubiales told the court that he was ‘totally sure’ the Spain striker consented to the kiss during the trophy ceremony in 2023
Hermoso told the court that she ‘never’ agreed to the kiss, that she had felt ‘disrespected’ by what Rubiales
‘She squeezed me very tightly under my armpits, she lifted me, and when I came down I asked her if I can give you a kiss, and she said ‘OK’, that’s what happened,’ he said.
‘What happened had no importance neither for me nor for her,’ Rubiales added during his highly anticipated testimony, describing the kiss as ‘an act of affection’.
He said the kiss was to mark a unique moment because ‘you don’t win a World Cup every day,’ adding: ‘Even when I see my daughters I don’t kiss them, but at New Year’s Eve we kiss each other.’
Prosecutor Marta Durántez, asked him whether he would have acted the same ‘if it had been a man’, to which he responded: ‘It depends on whether it had been a player with whom I have a great relationship.’
He said that in the national team there were ‘three or four players with whom I have a great relationship and one of them was Jenni Hermoso.’
Referring to celebrations with male footballers, he said that the World Cup win was not comparable to the UEFA National League but added: ‘I used to kiss a lot of footballers.’
Hermoso told the court that she ‘never’ agreed to the kiss, that she had felt ‘disrespected’ by what Rubiales had done and that it ‘stained one of the happiest days of my life.’
Rubiales, who was the head of the Spanish Football Association at the time of the 2023 tournament in Australia, resigned in disgrace later that year.