‘It’s over’: World Cup kiss becomes Spanish football’s #MeToo moment

When Jenni Hermoso arrived in the stands, the standing ovation was thundering. On the field below, Atlético de Madrid and AC Milan were battling it out for the Women’s Cup, but the message – scrawled on posters, temporary tattoos and a metres-long banner unfurled by the players – was unanimous at the stadium in Madrid on Saturday night: “We’re with you, Jenni Hermoso.”

It was a hint of how the tumultuous events of the past week since La Roja’s dazzling World Cup win have supercharged the long-running battle for equality in women’s football. As the hashtag #SeAcabó, meaning “it’s over”, was embraced from Sevilla to Santander, it was clear that Spanish football’s #MeToo moment had arrived.

After years of pushing for change, Spain’s players were eager to seize on the momentum. “Grandma, tell me about how your team won the World Cup,” read an illustration posted on social media by La Roja’s Misa Rodríguez on Friday. The grandmother answers: “We didn’t just win the World Cup, little one. We won so much more.”

Hours earlier, Luis Rubiales, the embattled head of the Spanish football federation, had lashed out at “fake feminism” and bemoaned what he called a “social assassination” in the reaction to his grabbing Hermoso by the head and kissing her on the lips during the medal ceremony at the World Cup. On Saturday, Fifa suspended Rubiales for 90 days, ordering both him and the federation to stay away from Hermoso and those close to her.

The backlash against Rubiales’ conduct was swift. The World Cup champions said they would not play for the national team until the federation’s leadership was removed. More than 50 other female players said the same. On Saturday, nearly all of the coaching and technical staff for Spain’s women’s team resigned, joining the seven members of the Spanish football federation who reportedly responded to Rubiales’ speech with their resignation.

“In six days, feminism swept Rubiales away,” the El País journalist Isabel Valdés wrote on social media. “In six days #SeAcabó has replaced the kiss that Hermoso never consented to.”

Condemnations of Rubiales’ behaviour cut across political lines. The country’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called the kiss an “unacceptable gesture”, while the country’s acting equality minister, Podemos’s Irene Montero, described it as a “form of sexual violence that we women suffer on a daily basis and until now has been invisible”.

The conservative People’s party, criticised by women’s groups for allowing the anti-feminist far right to gain a foothold in local and regional governments across Spain, also weighed in.

“Spaniards don’t deserve this,” the party’s Cuca Gamarra told broadcaster Antena 3. “It’s a global embarrassment for the whole country and is tarnishing the incredible victory of a group of women who should be the only protagonists.”

Across Spain, many sought to broaden the conversation. No longer was this only the story of a team that had long wrestled with the perception that the federation saw them as less worthy than their male counterparts; what had played out on the world stage was a power imbalance that hit home for many.

“To all the guys who are stunned by the reaction against Rubiales; it’s because this has happened to all of us,” the journalist Irantzu Varela wrote on social media. “With our boss, with our client, with our teacher, with our friend, with a stranger, with you?”

Rubiales initially dismissed his critics as “idiots and stupid people” and later offered an apology that was widely seen as half-hearted. As the uproar continued, he changed tack on Friday and sought to portray the kiss as consensual, claiming that he had asked Hermoso if he could give her a peck and that she had replied “OK.”

Hermoso rejected any suggestion that the kiss was consensual. She described Rubiales’ words as “categorically false” and said the “conversation did not happen”.

Rubiales offered up the claim as he insisted he would stay on as president of the federation. “I will not resign,” he said repeatedly, his defiance earning hearty applause among the federation members in attendance, including Jorge Vilda, the coach of the Spanish women’s national team, and the men’s national team coach, Luis de la Fuente.

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Natalia Torrente, the editor of sports website Relevo, said the reaction from the federation – which counts just six women among its 140 members – to Rubiales’ refusal to resign offered a glimpse of the deep-rooted systemic issues that female players have long faced.

“Five times he shouted it, clinging a little tighter to his position in each sentence, and shattering what little dignity he had left as an institutional representative,” she said in a piece that described Rubiales as a “global embarrassment”.

On Saturday, both Vilda and de la Fuente sought to distance themselves from Rubiales, issuing statements criticising his actions. Spanish media described their U-turns as a sign that Rubiales was becoming increasingly isolated from those who had long protected him. The country’s most powerful football clubs, from Real Madrid to Barcelona, have also condemned Rubiales’ behaviour.

On Sunday, as the Spanish government promised to continue its efforts to have Rubiales removed from the federation, women across the country called for the battle to continue.

“Despite Rubiales’ attempts to gaslight all of the women in this country, let’s show that we’re a society that refuses to take a step backwards,” Patricia Moreno wrote in Vogue España. “Our World Cup champions will thus have achieved something even more historic than a sporting title: the fall of a man who believed he was invincible.”