The prosecuting lawyer in the trial of Luis Rubiales says he enforced “a code of silence” among those in senior roles at the Spanish football federation while trying to calm the storm around his behaviour at the 2023 Women’s World Cup final. 

The former president of the Spanish football federation (RFEF) kissed Jenni Hermoso as she and her Spain team-mates were receiving their winners’ medals after beating England 1-0 in the World Cup final on August 20, 2023. He maintains that kiss was consensual. 

“What Mr Rubiales said was put into action and was said. He was in charge of everything. If he fell, the others fell with him,” said the prosecuting lawyer Marta Durantez while making her closing argument in Rubiales’ trial for alleged sexual assault and coercion. 

Rubiales, 47, and three other RFEF employees — the former Spain women’s coach Jorge Vilda, the former Newcastle United forward and ex-RFEF sporting director Albert Luque and former marketing director Ruben Rivera — are alleged to have coerced Hermoso into publicly supporting Rubiales’ version of events, that the kiss had been consensual. Rubiales, Luque, Rivera and Vilda deny any wrongdoing.

“It happened publicly, it was seen not only by all of Spain, but by the whole world,” continued Durantez. “The humiliation for the victim is greater when the whole world has to witness the act. It is not a minor offence. 

“Not only did the whole world have to witness it, but afterwards there was a series of behaviours such as coercion that made the act of kissing even more serious and illegal. But it was also her boss. Yes, yes. Her boss. And not a boss in terms of labour law. We are talking about a player with the power she has, zero, with the president of the Spanish Football Federation. 

“When there is an anti-harassment protocol that says that such behaviour is totally prohibited. And he knew it. If he had only skimmed it, that’s his problem, he should have known.”

The three co-accused — Vilda, Luque and Rivera — also gave their evidence on Wednesday at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s national high court in San Fernando de Henares near Madrid.

Vilda was asked by Durantez about the flight back from Sydney, and why he spoke to Hermoso’s brother Rafael, but not the player herself. 

“I didn’t see it as appropriate (to speak to Hermoso),” he said. “She was with her closest friends, Irene Paredes, Misa (Rodriguez), Alexia (Putellas), Laia Codina. They were celebrating her, I didn’t think it was appropriate, I wanted to respect them. 

“After listening to Hermoso in court, because we haven’t spoken since the World Cup, I could see that she was hurt because I hadn’t asked her how she was. Maybe I should have done it myself.”

The coach said he was not sent by Rubiales to talk to Rafael, and it was a decision he made having seen the level of attention that the kiss was getting from the media. 

Asked if he was concerned how it might affect him, he replied: “My concern was for my daughter (who was suffering with appendicitis), then for Jennifer Hermoso, the team and the national team. I didn’t look any further.”

Vilda said he spoke to Rafael to try to “find a way to normalise the situation and talk about what was really important, which was the championship (World Cup) and the good performance she (Hermoso) had shown. He told me that he was going to talk to her.

“I told him about my concerns about the media impact and how it could affect Jenni. 

“In neither case did I talk to him about Rubiales or think about Rubiales.”

Vilda’s lawyer Luis Jordana referred to the testimony of Rafael Hermoso from earlier in the trial, where he said that the coach warned him of adverse personal and family consequences for the player if she did not agree to back up Rubiales’ version of events. “Was that the case?” he asked Vilda.

“In no case, it is false,” replied the coach. “I conveyed to him my concern for what this media pressure could do to Jenni.”

Luque, the former RFEF sporting director, described his friendship with Hermoso before the kiss, saying it went beyond just anything to do with football. 

He gave his version of the events in Ibiza, where some of the Spain players were celebrating winning the World Cup, when he tried to speak with the player in person about what had happened. 

“She told me that she knew I wanted to do the right thing, but that she didn’t want to talk to anyone and that she thanked me for caring about her,” said Luque. “I told her that I was downstairs and her response was that she didn’t want to come down. I told her that I respected that and that she should enjoy herself.”

He says Rivera, the former marketing director, told him to wait as Hermoso’s friend (Ana Ecube) wanted to talk to him. 

“She thought I deserved an answer since I was there,” Luque said. “I let her know that I was there as a friend, not as a member of the Spanish Federation. The conversation lasted a maximum of 15 minutes, during which time she told me that Jenni wasn’t going to talk and that she wanted to focus on enjoying herself.”

He says Ecube suggested they exchange numbers and that “she told me she could see that I had acted in good faith”. 

“On one side I had a friend (Hermoso) and on the other, another friend, who was Luis Rubiales. I knew that everything that was happening was going to escalate.”

He says he received a message from Ecube explaining that Hermoso wasn’t going to speak but that her agency had issued a statement. 

“At that moment I gave an unfortunate reply due to a combination of things,” said Luque. “Today, I regret that reply, but it was a moment of annoyance. I’m a hot-tempered person who replies without counting to 10.”

It was in those messages that Luque accused Hermoso of “jumping on the bandwagon to kill him (Rubiales)” and that he would be “happy for the first time in my life” if Hermoso finds herself all alone.

When giving testimony last week, Ecube alleges that Luque said she and Hermoso would be assured of future work if they co-operated with the RFEF. 

When asked about this by his lawyer Jorge Navarro Massip, Luque said: “I am in the federation because I understand football, giving people jobs is not my position in the federation. What am I going to give Ana Ecube a job in? I don’t know if she’s a flight attendant, a carpenter, a lawyer… I don’t know what she does, what am I going to offer her a job in? If at any time she thought that, it’s far from reality.”

It had been alleged earlier in the trial by Hermoso’s Spain team-mate Codina that Rivera had been pressuring and insistent with Hermoso in Ibiza, while trying to get her to charge her phone in order to talk to then RFEF integrity director Miguel Garcia Caba and Luque. 

“Ruben insists and ends up taking it (the mobile). Yes, he insists more than two or three times.” 

Then later, said Codina, he came over “at least five or six times, asking Jennifer to go and talk to Luque. 

“He keeps insisting until Jenni gets overwhelmed and starts crying again.”

When asked about this sequence of events by his lawyer Joaquin Jimenez Rubio, Rivera said: “It doesn’t make any sense. What’s the hurry for me to give Jenni the phone if she didn’t have to go on a supposed Zoom call until the afternoon, which she never did?

“No coherent person with my experience is going to say anything inappropriate to her,” Rivera said in regards to Codina’s testimony about repeatedly asking Hermoso to speak to Luque, to the point of making her cry.

And asked why he agreed to follow instructions from Luque and other members of the RFEF, Rivera said: “To do the opposite would have been absurd. I am a professional, I was there to help everyone.”

He told the court that at no point did he see Hermoso sad — “not at any time. Jenni never gave me any indication”.

In her closing statement, the prosecuting lawyer Durantez spoke of her sadness at being “obliged to re-victimise again and again the person who has already been a victim”.

“I had to do it in the investigation phase, I had to do it in the instruction phase and I’ve had to do it in the oral trial phase,” she said. “I’ve had to ask her why she was laughing in the dressing room, why she was drinking champagne, why she was eating and other aspects to which I refer to now. 

“Did she not have the right to celebrate a sporting triumph of such importance? As part of the Spanish women’s national team, they had become world champions. It’s clear, because that’s how she declared it, that she had conflicting emotions. 

“She wanted to go unnoticed, that all this not be left at the non-consensual kiss but in the triumph of the national team and her as part of that national team. 

“What can we demand that she does? That she goes to a corner to cry? That she puts on a show? Can we demand that of her? Is she less of a victim for that?”

Durantez was also critical of the behaviour of witnesses from the RFEF including Pablo Garcia Cuervo, the former director of communications, who was told on day one of the trial to speak with “clarity not cockiness” by the judge, Jose Manuel Clemente.  

“If this is how they behave in a court of law, what would it be like in the RFEF?” asked Durantez. “And we thought that the players weren’t going to be afraid, that Mrs Hermoso wasn’t going to be afraid of what was going to happen to her? They have been rude, arrogant, here, in the middle of the hearing in front of a prosecutor, lawyers and a magistrate.”

She also highlighted the impact that the incident and fallout had had on Hermoso, who has had to seek psychological help and “live through the humiliation” of what happened. 

“She was not allowed to enjoy the triumph… She won’t be remembered as one of the players who won the World Cup, (but as) Jennifer Hermoso, the woman with the kiss. Because of her? Of course not, because of someone who committed a criminal act. Nobody supported her, nobody cared about her.”

While the co-accused were giving evidence on Wednesday, Montse Tome, the Spain Women’s head coach who had spoken in court earlier this week, announced her latest squad for the upcoming Nations League matches against Belgium and England. Hermoso, Spain’s record goalscorer, was not in it. She has been in and out of the squad ever since the World Cup win in 2023. 

The prosecutors are asking for a two-and-a-half-year sentence for Rubiales (one year for the alleged sexual assault and 18 months for the alleged coercion) and 18 months for the three co-accused of coercion. They are also requesting €50,000 ($51,800) in compensation from Rubiales and for him to be banned from working as a sports official.

On Thursday, the court will hear closing statements from the lawyers representing Hermoso, the Spanish players’ counsel (AFE) and those representing each of the four defendants. 

The trial continues.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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