Spain’s Jenni Hermoso gets restraining order for Luis Rubiales

The latest development in the kiss controversy facing the Royal Spanish Football Federation now includes a restraining order.

ESPN and TMZ reported a Spanish court ruled Friday that former soccer federation president Luis Rubiales must stay at least 200 meters — which equates to around 656 feet — from Jenni Hermoso, the country’s women’s soccer star he kissed following the country’s victory in the Women’s World Cup final.

The decision occurred during a hearing for the sexual assault complaint filed by Hermoso and came five days after Rubiales announced his intention to resign, writing that “it’s evident that I cannot go back to my position.”

“We maintain what we’ve said from the beginning. It was a nonconsensual kiss,” Carla Vall, Hermoso’s attorney, said Friday, according to ESPN. “Thanks to the [images of the kiss], the entire world, the entire country, has been able to observe there was no type of consent. And we are going to prove that in the courtroom.

During the ceremony that followed Spain’s 1-0 victory over England on Aug. 20, which clinched the country’s first Women’s World Cup title, Rubiales pulled Hermoso toward him for a kiss on the lips that the 33-year-old later called “unacceptable.”

At first, though, it appeared that Rubiales wouldn’t resign from his position. 

He labeled the controversy a “social assassination” during the soccer federation’s emergency general assembly, comparing it to kissing one of his daughters and calling it “a spontaneous kiss, mutual, euphoric, and consensual.”

But Rubiales was later suspended 90 days by FIFA following an investigation.

Hermoso filed a complaint alleging sexual assault that could lead to prison time for Rubiales, and the scandal that overshadowed the accomplishment by Hermoso and her teammates transitioned to court.

Hermoso blasted Rubiales’ claims that the kiss was consensual — “at no time” was that the case, she said in a statement — and players from Spain’s women’s national team threatened to not participate in matches until Rubiales had been removed from his position.

On Friday, Hermoso’s attorney told reporters that the soccer star who scored three goals during the 2023 World Cup “feels affected by what happened, by the degrading act she experienced in the stadium which has tarnished this sporting achievement.”