Luis Rubiales, the former head of Spain’s soccer federation, was convicted on Thursday of sexual assault for forcibly kissing a member of the women’s national team on the lips after the team won the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Mr. Rubiales’s kiss of the player, Jennifer Hermoso, set off a national scandal, deepened debates about longstanding sexism in Spanish soccer and became a watershed moment in Spain’s #MeToo movement.
A Spanish court on Thursday cleared Mr. Rubiales of a separate charge of coercion. For the sexual assault conviction, it fined Mr. Rubiales 10,800 euros, about $11,270.
In delivering the ruling, Judge José Gonzales said that a kiss “is not the normal way of greeting people with whom one does not have an emotional relationship.”
Mr. Rubiales was also ordered not to go within 200 meters, or about 650 feet, of Ms. Hermoso for one year. The court said he cannot contact Ms. Hermoso and must pay her 3,000 euros (about $3,130) for “moral damage caused to her.”
Judge José Gonzales said the sum was proportionate for the forcible kiss, especially given the “time and place” — in full view of thousands of spectators in the stadium and many others watching the ceremony on television.
There was no immediate response from Ms. Hermoso. She had said that the kiss was not consensual, which Mr. Rubiales disputed. Speaking in a courtroom near Madrid earlier this month, he said, “You don’t win a World Cup every day,” and he added that he had kissed other players in celebratory moments.
Prosecutors said the former soccer boss had pressured Ms. Hermoso to drop her claim and play down the incident.
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