Insiders reveal how the toxic culture in Spanish women's football exploded into public view

By Kathryn Diss, ABC

For Spanish World Cup champion Laia Codina, the worst moment came on the plane trip home from Australia.

A day earlier, Spanish Football Federation boss Luis Rubiales had planted a kiss on star striker Jenni Hermoso's lips on the World Cup winner's podium in Sydney as tens of millions watched on live TV.

Now Rubiales and his inner circle were walking the aisles, trying to defuse a growing scandal.

"Everyone was trying to save themselves, but no-one was caring about Jenni," Codina told Foreign Correspondent. "Everyone against her, but no-one with her. And I think that in that moment, she felt alone."

Sitting next to her close friend Jenni Hermoso, Codina had a front-row seat to the unfolding events.

Rubiales and his staff were pressuring Hermoso to record a video they could send to the media, declaring the kiss had been consensual.

They were suggesting she could say, "We like to hug each other", Codina recalled, and, "We're always very friendly".

"I'm not joking, I mean, almost the whole flight for 24 hours," she said. "They were trying to tell her that it was a friendly kiss, that it was something friendly. And obviously it wasn't, and all of us, we saw that."

When Hermoso refused, Rubiales and his staff turned to her teammates and family members on the flight, pressing them to help change her mind.

"[Rubiales] was scared because he saw that Jenni was like, 'OK, I can't deal with this anymore. I'm not going to say anything that's going to help you. I'm going to say what I really feel.'"

Hermoso's decision to speak up was a turning point for Spanish women's football decades in the making.

A Foreign Correspondent investigation has found a culture of sexism and misogyny has long dominated the sport's national administration in Spain.

Top-level players and insiders in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom have revealed how they were exposed to sexist and homophobic slurs, given substandard coaching and equipment, and punished for speaking out.

Their accounts come after Rubiales faced court in the capital, Madrid, over the past two weeks charged with sexual assault and coercion over the infamous kiss and the events that followed.

Former coach Jorge Vilda and two former Spanish football federation directors were also on trial, charged with coercion.

All four men are facing potential jail time.

Many who spoke to Foreign Correspondent said they were not surprised by the kiss, which finally blew the lid on the sport's toxic culture in Spain.

It was "something that had to happen for a change to occur", said Beatriz Alvarez Mesa, the president of Liga F, Spain's top women's football league. "Because so many serious things had already happened."

A deep-rooted 'culture of fear'

Alvarez Mesa still remembers an early encounter she had with Luis Rubiales shortly after he was appointed president of the Spanish Football Federation in 2018.

She had been working with the federation for only a few months, with the goal of launching a much-needed professional women's league, when he got in contact.

"I had just become a mother," she said. "He wrote an email to tell me that I should focus on my motherhood and set an example by dedicating myself to it. This gives us a clear idea of the sexism and kind of person he is, doesn't it?"

Rubiales's behaviour was just the tip of the iceberg. For years, tensions had been seething between the female players and their male bosses in Spanish football.

"These were not things that surprised me," Alvarez Mesa said. "But we came to normalise them because we were used to that kind of treatment."

For almost 40 years, Spain lived under the brutal dictatorship of Francisco Franco until his death in 1975. His regime ruled with a machismo culture that believed men were of greater importance than women.

Women's right to vote was rolled back, they were not able to divorce their husbands, and they were expected to stay at home and tend to the children. Playing sport wasn't an option.

Spanish football legend Vero Boquete had to confront these challenges from the moment she stepped onto the football field at age five.

"I was the only girl playing football in my city," Boquete said. "There was a federation rule that didn't allow girls to play with boys. I was training and going to every game but I was sitting on the bench because I was not allowed to play."

Boquete fought the system. Eventually, her natural talent for the game saw her debut for Spain at just 17 years old.

But when she reflects on her time playing for her country, there are plenty of memories she'd rather forget.

"It was a culture of fear," she said. "We have so many experiences where players that try to speak up, suddenly they never come back to the national team."

A high price for speaking up

Most of her time at the team was spent under the reign of long-serving coach Ignacio Quereda, who is accused of belittling players, reducing them to tears and at times, physically grabbing them.

"In training, everyone was afraid of losing one ball or doing something wrong because he would be yelling," Boquete said. "It was an environment where people felt tension and pressure. That was a little crazy because you shouldn't feel like that.

"But at the same time … you are in the national team, [and] you think that, 'Oh, that's a really high level. Maybe I just have to get used to this because if all these women are dealing with that, maybe this is the right way of pushing the team forward.'"

His comments weren't limited to how the players were performing on the pitch. Quereda also attacked them personally.

"He will do so many homophobic comments like, 'Oh, you just need a big dick or a big man that tell you what it is.' There were comments of any type but nobody did or say anything," Boquete said.

"He was stronger and harder with players that have maybe a weaker character, like saying comments about their body … saying how shit you are on the field."

In 2015, when Boquete captained the Spanish team to the World Cup in Canada, the power balance suddenly shifted after the team was bundled out in the group stage.

She finally found the courage to speak out, leading a united squad to go public with their request to remove the coach.

"I felt the responsibility in the sense … I'm the best player in my country, and right now I can really do something that has an impact for the future," she said. "So, I really wanted to use my moment and power that football gave me to change things."

The federation that had supported him for 27 years finally caved in (although official records say he resigned).

It should have been a turning point for the team, but it wasn't. The federation put in charge untested 34-year-old Jorge Vilda, who players said did little to change the culture.

"We had to leave our doors open at night because he has to come and check to see if we are in the rooms," Boquete said. "The captains, we have to be sitting during lunch … with eye contact … because he was afraid that we [would] start to talk about him.

"For me, he was not a good coach, he was not a good manager, he was not a good leader and in the treatment of people, he was terrible."

After leading the effort to remove coach Quereda, Boquete knew her days playing for her country were numbered.

Eventually, she was phased out of the national team.

A team at breaking point

It might be difficult to fathom, but Spain only professionalised its domestic female football league about a year before the national team took out the 2023 World Cup in Australia.

"We have faced countless challenges, a lot of sexism, and honestly, very little awareness or conviction in believing in women's football," said Alvarez Mesa, herself a former player.

By early 2022, she had secured government approval to create Liga F, Spain's first professional football league for women. But it hadn't been easy.

"The federation never wanted women's football to become a professional sport," she said. "That explains all the obstacles, all the setbacks, the refusal to recognise our legal competencies and the ongoing attempts to obstruct our process and any advances we were making."

While many champions of Spanish women's football, like Alvarez Mesa, had battled and achieved much for the players, plenty of tensions remained unresolved.

In September 2022, just a year out from the World Cup in Australia, they exploded.

Fifteen of Spain's top-flight players dropped a bombshell on the federation, declaring themselves unavailable for selection because sub-standard training conditions were affecting their mental and psychological health.

"I think that what we were asking for was something very simple, which was that if we didn't get results, as happens in the male team, that things would be changed," said Lola Gollardo, a national squad player in the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.

Unhappy with the playing conditions, she chose to protest the selection for 2023.

"In our case, things were not being changed, and we thought it was a good move and a good time to do it," she said.

Despite meeting with several of the players, Luis Rubiales rejected their demands and publicly labelled them "brats" and "extortioners".

Private conversations the players had with the federation were leaked to the media.

Former Spanish sports presenter turned TV host Danae Boronat was following the story closely. She has spent the past four years uncovering - and exposing - the mistreatment of women who have represented Spain's national team.

"I discovered things I didn't expect," she said. The players felt "mistreated, belittled, ignored".

"They were travelling under conditions that were far from what you'd expect for an elite team," she said.

While other teams had physiotherapists, doctors, psychologists and fitness coaches, in the Spanish women's team, "none of this existed", she said. "There was no technology, no top-level training camps. They were branded as whimsical, spoiled children."

World Cup glory eclipsed

A year out from the World Cup, the squad was divided.

Alexia Putellas, one of Barcelona FC's most famous players, had the difficult task of leading a fractured playing group to the biggest stage in world football.

"It was a complicated moment for the team, but we went in with clear ideas," she said. "Everyone knew the way things were and knew what we wanted to do, which was to win. And luckily, in the end, this is what happened."

Like most other female footballers in Spain, Putellas faced an uphill battle to play the sport she loves.

"The discrimination already starts at a very young age, without you being aware of it," she said. "I remember the schedules when I was a little girl. The female schedule is what's left over. With this, they are already showing what their intention is: An eight-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy are not the same."

So when she finally achieved the pinnacle of her career - winning the 2023 World Cup final in Sydney - she was dismayed to see how quickly the glory was snatched away by the most powerful man in Spanish football.

Even before the kiss, Luis Rubiales's behaviour was raising eyebrows.

Standing alongside Spain's Queen Letizia and her 16-year-old daughter as the final whistle sounded, he grabbed his crotch in wild celebration.

His behaviour on the winner's podium all but guaranteed that he, and not the team, would dominate the headlines.

"I felt shame, anger, rage," said Ana Munoz, the former vice-president of integrity at the federation, who was watching from home. "I think it was a way of expressing, 'Despite all you have done … I am the sun god.''"

"I am one of those people who think that everything happens for a reason, and destiny was destiny and that was bound to happen and that's it," Putellas said, when asked about the kiss. "Obviously, if I had to write the script it would have been different but no, it wasn't up to me."

It was "supposed to be our moment as a team, not his moment", said Laia Codina. "For me, it was supposed to be a happy moment, but it was a sad moment. But I also knew that it was a moment to change history."

Spain's 'Me Too' moment

As fierce public debate raged about whether the kiss was consensual, a troubling timeline of alleged intimidation and harassment was unfolding out of sight.

The alleged coercion started from the moment Jenni Hermoso left the medal stage.

On the way to the airport, she was pulled off the team bus to sign a statement the federation had prepared on her behalf, declaring support for Mr Rubiales.

It read: "It was a totally spontaneous mutual gesture amid the joy of winning a World Cup … nobody should bother more about a gesture of friendship and gratitude."

The statement was sent to the press even though she didn't agree to its contents.

Coach Jorge Vilda also got involved. When Hermoso refused to speak with him, he allegedly went to her brother and said her behaviour would have negative consequences for her career and personal life.

The alleged harassment is claimed to have continued as the team took a celebratory trip to Ibiza in the days after their return to Spain.

Two federation directors followed them to the island. The behaviour only stopped after FIFA suspended Rubiales.

In the weeks that followed the kiss, Jenni Hermoso was threatened with legal action by the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).

Putellas tweeted a slogan that soon went viral: "se acabó", or "it's over".

Protests erupted on the streets as 81 Spanish players refused to play for the women's team until Luis Rubiales was removed from his position.

"Alexia Putellas's slogan was truly a tsunami," Danae Boronat said. "What happened is that all the fans and supporters of women's football understood the players needed their help. They understood that it had to be one voice, one mass, 'se acabó.''"

Rubiales eventually resigned after vehemently denying any wrongdoing. Coach Jorge Vilda was sacked.

Laia Codina never imagined their remarkable World Cup victory would be overshadowed by a scandal involving the most powerful man in Spanish football, or that it would lead to her becoming a witness in a trial over the alleged sexual assault of one of her closest friends.

But now she believes it had to happen to spark real change.

"The court case … is a good moment to show everyone that Spain is not like this … it's going to be really important because it's going to mark our future as a country," she said.

"Obviously, I didn't want to experience this. But it happened and I think that it helped to change a little bit … and to have a better world for all of us."

- ABC