Madrid, Feb 3 (EFE).- Women’s World Cup winner Jenni Hermoso said Monday that she felt “violated” and “disrespected” after receiving an unsolicited kiss from former Spanish football federation chief Luis Rubiales.
She denied hearing Rubiales ask for “a little kiss,” as he claimed, but emphasized that even if she had, she would not have consented.
“I did not approve it,” said the Tigres UANL player during the first session of the trial at Spain’s National Court, where Rubiales and three former senior RFEF officials face charges over the non-consensual kiss and alleged pressure on Hermoso to justify it.
The kiss, which Rubiales gave Hermoso after Spain won the World Cup final in Sydney on Aug. 20, 2023, changed her life “from the very first moment” and prevented her from fully enjoying the victory, she lamented.
She said her life has felt like it has been put on “standby.”
“I knew my boss was kissing me, and this should not happen in any work or social environment,” she said.
Hermoso revealed that she felt relieved to live in Mexico, where she plays for Tigres UANL, away from the intense media scrutiny she faced upon arriving in Madrid, where reporters followed her “24 hours a day.”
During questioning by Deputy Prosecutor Marta Durántez, Hermoso said she wanted to report the incident “from the very beginning,” even before appearing at the prosecutor’s office, and denied being coerced into doing so.
“I Had No Time to React”
Hermoso reiterated multiple times that she neither consented to nor approved the kiss. She also described the pressure she and her family endured from the other three accused: former men’s national team sports director Albert Luque, ex-women’s team coach Jorge Vilda, and former RFEF marketing manager Rubén Rivera.
Recalling the moment, Hermoso said after greeting the Queen and Infanta Sofía, she approached Rubiales, and they embraced.
“The mess we’ve caused,” she joked, before Rubiales suddenly lifted her off the ground. “I had my legs almost around his waist,” she recalled, adding that he then grabbed her face.
“The next thing I is his hands on my ears, and then the kiss,” she said.
She firmly denied Rubiales’ claim that he asked for permission. “At no point did I hear him say, ‘Can I give you a little kiss?’ And even if I had heard it, I would have refused.”
“When he put his hands on my ears, the next thing that happened was the kiss,” she reiterated. “As soon as I got down, I knew it wasn’t normal. I felt disrespected. That moment tainted one of the happiest days of my life. At no point did I seek or expect it.”
Despite the ordeal, she said she still wanted to celebrate Spain’s victory. “My attitude or how I carried myself doesn’t change how I felt,” she said. “I don’t need to be crying in my room or throwing myself on the floor for people to understand my pain.”
Pressure to Justify Rubiales
After the kiss, Hermoso detailed the pressure she faced—from the locker room to the return flight to Spain and even during a post-tournament trip to Ibiza.
She claimed that Rubiales and others repeatedly urged her to issue a statement or record a video in his defense. He even appealed to her in Doha, saying it was for his “daughters,” and allegedly made a remark that hurt her deeply: “You and I like the same thing.”
When that failed, Hermoso said her then-coach, Jorge Vilda, tried to persuade both her and her brother, even suggesting she would be “compensated.” Once in Ibiza, she was approached again by Rubén Rivera and Albert Luque, though she questioned why Luque had even traveled there.
“They were quite insistent,” she recalled, but added that what she did not receive from the RFEF was any concern for her well-being.
“I felt completely unprotected by the RFEF—it should have been my safe place,” she said, adding she couldn’t enjoy what it meant to be a world champion.
Meanwhile, women’s football director of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Ana Álvarez, testified that Hermoso appeared “shaken and worried” on the flight from Sydney to Spain after refusing to record a video proposed byto “downplay” his kiss.
During her witness testimony in Rubiales’ trial, Álvarez told prosecutors that Rubiales had asked her to enter the locker room and call Hermoso out, though he did not specify why. Álvarez was not present for their conversation.
She did not speak to Hermoso again until the return flight, when the player approached her at the back of the plane.
“I saw her agitated and concerned,” Álvarez recalled. “The president had asked her to make a video to downplay the issue, and she told me she didn’t want to.” EFE
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