Rubiales Convicted of Sexual Assault for World Cup Kiss

Luis Rubiales, the former head of Spain’s soccer federation, was convicted on Thursday of sexual assault for forcibly kissing a member of the women’s national team on the lips after the team won the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Mr. Rubiales's kiss of the player, Jennifer Hermoso, set off a national scandal, deepened debates about longstanding sexism in Spanish soccer, and became a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement. A Spanish court on Thursday cleared Mr. Rubiales of a separate charge of coercion.

Conviction and Sentence

For the sexual assault conviction, the court fined Mr. Rubiales 10,800 euros, about $11,270. In delivering the ruling, Judge José Gonzales said that a kiss “is not the normal way of greeting people with whom one does not have an emotional relationship.”