Rubiales Kiss: Court Confirms €10,800 Fine

The National Court has confirmed the 18 months of a fine to Luis Rubiales (10,800 euros in total) for the unseeled kiss to the player Jenni Hermoso after the 2023 World Cup final of Australia, in which Spain was proclaimed world champion. The Criminal Chamber has also confirmed the acquittal of the rest of the defendants, including the former women’s selector Jorge Vilda, former sports director Albert Luque and the head of Marketing Rubén Rivera, and has dismissed the request of the Prosecutor’s Office to repeat the trial for the alleged interference of Judge José Manuel Fernández-Prieto.

The 38 -page judgment, issued by the Court chaired by Teresa Palacios, considers the commission of the crime of sexual aggression by the former president of the Spanish Football Federation (FEF) proven and confirms the sentence issued by the Central Criminal Court on February 20. A clear support for magistrate Fernández-Prieto, who “has adjusted to the rules of logic by assessing the tests not manifestly erroneously, absurd, capricious or absolutely inconsistent.”

The Chamber also maintains the prohibition that Rubiales approaches beautiful in a radius of 200 meters, as well as communicating with it for a year. Similarly, confirms the compensation of 3,000 euros that the former president of the FEF must pay the player for the moral damages caused, as well as the payment of half of the coasts generated, including those originated by the particular accusation.

In his resource, Rubiales, 47, claimed that the prosecuted facts did not fit the crime of sexual aggression because they did not have an objective sexual connotation, since the kiss occurred in a context of public and non -libidinous celebration. However, the three magistrates of the court claim that the criminal type does not require the concurrence of sexual intention, since it is enough that it is carried out without consent. They add that, according to the doctrine of the Supreme Court, “it cannot be said that a kiss in those circumstances were frequent or usual or usual, so much so that the defendant did not kiss any of the other players on the lips, nor to any of the people who accompanied him in the box.”

On the other hand, the sentence continues, Rubiales «only did it with the complainant, with whom it does not know that he usually greets himself in this way or that he would have greeted himself on some other previous occasion. Moreover, the defendant himself supports insistently in his discharge that came to ask permission to do so, which evidently demonstrates that this was not his common way of greeting himself and that that apparent expression of affection transferred the lines of social correction and clearly interfered in a more intimate and personal environment, because for this a consent that, he says, requested.

Without exculpatory value

For the room, it does not have an exculpatory value “the fact that this sudden reaction of unstoppable joy” was the result of the collective euphoria that supposedly seized the appellant at that time. In line with the judgment of the Central Criminal Court, the Chamber considers that the kiss was not consented and remembers that from the first moment the player Jenni Hermoso expressed her disgust with what happened, as she ratified herself in the trial, as well as her selection companions.

The Chamber considers that of the tests practiced it cannot be inferred that there is consent by the player. Similarly, with respect to Rubiales’ question of whether he could give him a “kiss”, he considers that “in this context and in this situation the surprise and unexpected question that the accused made at that time was totally rhetorical because the recipient did not have any reaction margin, since the accused could not even wait for any response.”

The Chamber considers the qualification of the court of instance to frame the facts in the attenuated subtype of sexual aggression, which, in no way, precise, involves minimizing or devaluing the prosecuted conduct and even less that with this the complainant or other victims of sexual aggressions are offended.

The Court of Instance also confirms the acquittal of the crime of coercion and recalls that when there is an acquittal as it happened in this case with this criminal type, the Chamber cannot review an absolute pronouncement except when causes of nullity, which do not occur in this case.

Regarding the compensation of 3,000 euros for moral damages that established the judgment of instance and that the accusations requested to increase up to 50,000 euros, the hearing indicates that the figure granted is “the adequate one to compensate the moral damage caused by some facts that have the entity they have, and not another, and also there the specific circumstances in which they occurred have been correctly valued.”