Spanish football is nothing if not dramatic.
Hot on the heels of the Spanish women’s dramatic victory over England in the final of the Women’s World Cup in Sydney two weekends ago, came the drama about Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales kissing forward Jenni Hermoso on the lips, during the presentation ceremony.
Within days, not only had world football governing body Fifa opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales, but the Spanish government had begun legal action to force the federation to suspend him after he refused to quit. All 23 of Hermoso’s World Cup teammates had announced that they would not play again until he was removed, and the entire cup-winning coaching staff had resigned in protest.
And not to be outdone, on Sunday Rubiales’s mother, Angeles Bejar, dramatically locked herself in a church in Motril, his hometown on Spain’s southern coast, vowing to remain on hunger strike indefinitely because of the “inhuman hunt” against her son.
Initially dismissed by some as just another reflection of Spain’s stereotypical Latin temperament, the kissing incident — and Rubiales’s apparent conviction that there was nothing inappropriate about his behaviour — has come to symbolise an entrenched male chauvinism in the country that has stubbornly refused to move with the times, even as women’s sport has burst through the glass ceiling.
It’s not a storm in a teacup, feminist activists say. It’s Spain’s #MeToo moment, and it’s long overdue.
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