Only hours after the head of the Spanish soccer federation insisted he would not step down for grabbing and kissing a member of Spain’s winning team fully on the lips at a Women’s World Cup medals ceremony last weekend in Australia, players on the squad announced on Friday that they would refuse to play until he was gone.
In a joint statement issued through their union, dozens of players said they would not take the field to play for Spain “if the current managers continue.”
In the statement, the player kissed, Jennifer Hermoso, said that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
The players’ ultimatum came after Luis Rubiales, president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, said at a news conference that he would not step aside, arguing he was the victim of “social assassination.”
News reports had predicted that Mr. Rubiales would quit after five years at the helm of Spanish soccer, but he instead took a defiant stand.
“I will not resign,” he said several times at an extraordinary meeting of the federation, to loud applause from some and silence from others, adding that “I will fight this to the end” and accusing his critics of “false feminism.”
In their response, the players say they condemn “behaviors that have violated the dignity of women,” and that they expected “forceful answers from the public powers” to address the incident.
The government is limited in its ability to punish members of the soccer federation, but after Mr. Rubiales made his remarks on Friday, it said it was taking steps to have him suspended. Víctor Francos, president of the National Sports Council and secretary of state for sports, said on Cadena SER radio: “We’re going to act — we’ve activated all the mechanisms to take appropriate measures.”
The controversy was a reminder that despite the Spanish team’s steep trajectory into the highest echelons of women’s soccer — the team did not qualify for a Women’s World Cup until 2015 — the program has been dogged by sexism and other scandals.
Most recently, 15 players revolted last year against the coach, Jorge Vilda, and the federation led by Mr. Rubiales. They complained of outdated training methods and controlling behavior, and refused to play for the national team, although some of them returned and played in the World Cup.
Players on the women’s national team have also said that they have been disrespected by top male soccer executives, saying that the men’s team was given superior equipment and treatment. Mr. Vilda has emerged as a polarizing figure in Spanish soccer, but Mr. Rubiales thanked him effusively on Friday and said that he would be rewarded with a new contract.
Not to mention culture in the country of Spain is very patriarchal. The women are, in turn, very strong themselves because they deal with so much “macho” bullshit. It’s crazy.
I mean, take this all with a grain of salt. This is my perception living there for a few years as a man from the US. It’s noticeably different, and we have large swaths of the country that operate on a similar male-centric mindset.
Care to expand on this? I'm interested in your perspective on this.
I mean, as I said, it’s a casual observation from an outsider. Historically, sure, you could very much argue there is a trend toward machismo and patriarchal structures in Spain, as well as a lot of spanish-speaking countries. I personally got myself in a lot of situations where I was observing a man acting really aggressively toward a woman and intervened. Everyone around me (my local friends) found it really weird that I would see an issue and/or step in out of some sense of duty. Even one or two of the women that I was attempting to help would sort of seem taken aback.
Again, I’m making a huge generalization, but there is something to be said about the difference in interpersonal relationships across different cultures. And in my experience, in Spain in particular, I noticed very sort of “aggressive” tactics of “flirting” among spanish men toward women in general, but also on the flip side, got the impression that the Spanish women grew to be very strong in pushing back when it came to unknown men. Again, these are my thoroughly biased, anecdotal findings from my years spent there.
But again, there’s also a noticeable difference in race relations. More sort of blunt racism that is treated as “normal,” whereas in my country the racists are more likely to coat their racism or deny it while obviously having a racist bent to their words and actions.
Spain is a pretty religious country, and that does tend to go hand-in-hand with some sense of patriachal behavior/thinking in a lot of cases. Now, I also lived in South America for a few years and there are some similar patterns there. But in my mind, Spain is distinctly more noticeable in these respects.