Luis Rubiales, who resigned as Spain’s top soccer official after he forcibly kissed a player, testified at his sexual assault trial on Tuesday that he did so as a sign of affection in “a situation of extraordinary joy.”
Mr. Rubiales has also been charged with coercion in connection with the episode, in which he pressed a kiss on the player, Jennifer Hermoso, on the field during the medal ceremony after Spain won the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Mr. Rubiales denied doing anything wrong during the encounter with Ms. Hermoso. Speaking in a courtroom near Madrid, he said, “You don’t win a World Cup every day,” and he added that he had kissed other players in celebratory moments.
He also said that he had asked for permission before kissing Ms. Hermoso, describing it as a peck. “I asked her, ‘Can I give you a little kiss?’ and she said, ‘OK,’” he told a prosecutor. Ms. Hermoso said shortly after the episode that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
“I couldn’t react — it was a thousandth of a second,” she later testified, adding that she had known immediately that the act was not normal.
“My boss was kissing me,” she said. “This should not happen.”
The kiss, and the ensuing fallout, became a moment of reckoning in the country as well as in the sport, pitting a culture of machismo against more recent progress in gender equality in Spanish soccer.
Mr. Rubiales, 47, faces two and a half years in prison if convicted. Three other men, including Jorge Vilda, the team’s coach at the World Cup, are accused of coercion, with prosecutors saying that they pressured Ms. Hermoso to drop her claim and downplay the incident. Each could face 18 months.
The trial opened last week with the testimony of Ms. Hermoso, 34, who described the kiss as the moment that “ruined one of the happiest days of my life.”
Ms. Hermoso, who plays in Mexico, also testified that top soccer officials had pressured her to say that Mr. Rubiales had done nothing wrong.
Ms. Hermoso was left off the Spain team after the episode, but on Monday the current head coach of the Spain women’s team, Montse Tomé, testified that Ms. Hermoso’s exclusion “was not a punishment.”
Ms. Tomé, who became the team’s coach in September 2023 after Mr. Vilda was fired, appeared at the court near Madrid as a witness for the defense.
In August 2023, Ms. Tomé and 10 other members of the Spain women’s coaching staff published a collective statement condemning Mr. Rubiales’s “unacceptable attitudes and actions.”
Ms. Tomé’s appointment as Mr. Vilda’s successor, however, was seen by some as a continuation of the old leadership. She had worked with Mr. Vilda as his assistant and ordered players to attend training camp. She was also seen by players as offering little practical support for Ms. Hermoso and ignoring calls for structural change in the soccer federation.
Ms. Hermoso, during her testimony, said that the federation had all but abandoned her after her complaints. She said that officials wanted only “to save their reputation.”
In the immediate aftermath of the kiss, Mr. Rubiales offered a tepid apology and resisted calls to resign. The Spanish soccer federation released a statement that quoted Ms. Hermoso calling the kiss “a totally spontaneous mutual gesture.” During her testimony, Ms. Hermoso said that she had never approved the statement.
Amid mounting pressure and waning support, Mr. Rubiales resigned as head of the national soccer organization, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, in September 2023.
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