Backlash

• Spain is now one of only two teams who are world champions in both the male and female competitions (Germany is the other).
• In a society where feminist progress has historically been met with backlash, it shows how far Spanish society has come to reject rancid machismo instantaneously.
• Read more:
  Luis Rubiales: these seven tactics made his speech excusing his assault on Jenni Hermoso a textbook case in silencing women

Machismo, on and off the pitch

• The kiss was not the only moment of such machismo that this team has had to contend with.
• In the autumn of 2022, 15 players demanded better working conditions, because they feared for their physical and mental health.
• These legitimate concerns made in private were leaked to the press and spun as a revolt of spoilt, female brats against the head coach Jorge Vilda.

Backlash to progress

• While there was slow but steady progress for women’s rights in the 1980s and 1990s, it was not until the administration of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (2004-2011) that progress accelerated, and the longstanding machismo culture began to face a real challenge.
• Two landmark legislative changes were made to combat gender violence in 2004 and progress gender equality in 2007.
• The most recent new legislation, passed in October 2022, strengthens criminal charges for sexual aggression, among other advancements for women’s rights.
• Even during the dictatorship in the 1960s, the slightest progress for female rights was perceived as a danger to a male-dominated society.

Solidarity

• Female and male feminists from all walks of life took to the streets demonstrating in Spanish cities, showing Rubiales the red card.
• An editorial in El País is brutally frank in its judgement of this powerful man who has behaved like a textbook perpetrator.
• No country can control its lunatics, but how it deals with them is a sign of its maturity.