--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Friday, Misa Rodriguez, a player on Spain's national footy team, posted a cartoon on Twitter. It's got a little girl with her foot on a ball looking up at her grandmother, and she asks, Abuela, cuéntame cómo ganasteis el Mundial. Grandma, tell me how we won the World Cup. No ganamos solo un Mundial, pequeña. Ganamos mucho más. We didn't just win the World Cup, little one. We won a lot more. She captioned the cartoon with Se acabó. It's over. Spain's women's team defied all the odds and won. And they're pretty sure they're about to win again.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Halima Shaw passes to Hari Mawati Hari passes to Noel King She cuts, oh my It's today, explain Sean Ramos-Vurum here with Gwendolyn Oxenham I'm a writer and producer and I made the audio docu-series called Hustle Rule The Untold Stories of Women's Soccer And she used to play a little footy herself I did, yeah, I played professionally for a hot minute in Brazil for Santos and I played for Duke in college and I write for Sports Illustrated and ESPN freelancing.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: We reached out there to talk about Spain's women's team because they pulled off something incredible and seemed to be on the cusp of another big win. It's worth keeping in mind that the men's side is just this fabled side where everyone has worshipped the Spanish style of play, but the women's side was always ignored. I mean, there was very much the cultural mentality of, oh, you know, football is not for women. And it took decades to sort of undo that. And that entire time, the national team was fighting for a change. Like, hey, can we have some women's jerseys? And hey, what about a pro league? So it wasn't until 2021 that they got a full domestic pro league.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: Once they had that, the players suddenly realized what it meant to be treated like a professionals. You know, the U.S. team has a nutritionist and a psychologist and they play friendlies against good teams. Well, Spain's team, they didn't get to play friendlies against quality teams and they didn't have the level of resources. And there's just a long reputation of the Spanish Federation, like not listening to what the players are asking for.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: Last September, 15 players protested the national team environment, the management style of the head coach. And so they all signed an email and saying that until conditions within the national team improved, they did not wish to be called up. So other teams have done this. France, for example, and the French Federation responded and they got a new coach. Well, Spain's reaction was fine. You don't want to play for the national team? Like, we don't want you. We'll go get a new team. And so they basically brought in a B team who then proceeded to win almost all of their games, including beating the U.S. And, you know, the federation was basically like, we don't want anyone back unless you apologize. So only three of those original 15 players were a part of this new World Cup team.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: And so it's just crazy that many of the stars of Barcelona are not playing for the World Cup team. So you've got this new team that's lined up most people, very different names combined with the old players, even though they were so talented and everyone could recognize this beautiful playing style. You can't win a World Cup when there's so much controversy and drama and fighting between the Federation and players who have to get to know each other. So, I mean, most people didn't give Spain a chance of winning. But then they got on the field and people sort of quickly re-evaluated.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: They were just a sight to behold. You know, they played Zambia and Costa Rica first, and neither of which are known to be powerhouses, but Zambia had just beaten Germany, who is known as a powerhouse, and they beat them 5-0 in just spectacular, beautiful goals. Making it look easy. Making it look easy. Puteas, do it, mozo.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: And then they played Japan, who was sort of the other team that all-tournament people were talking about how beautifully they were playing. and Japan sort of, you know, took them to school. It's Mina Tanaka running for Japan all by herself right now. Might not need the help! Up in the top corner! Incredible from Mina Tanaka! Incredible from Japan! But I think it was a really uniting moment where the Spain team came together and found a way to sort of rise out of that defeat and they felt more connected. You could just see that unity on the field and the joy.
--:-- Gwendolyn Oxenham: Like, I don't want to forget that element where Jenny Hermoso, after the semifinal she said to one of the reporters like you know these are the moves I learned playing in my neighborhood playing in my streets Like they gave me joy back then and they give me joy now and I hope we can bring others joy And you could just feel the love. Y mi abuelo, pues cuando íbamos por las típicas comidas de familia los domingos, siempre había balones y yo desde muy pequeña siempre me recuerdo como.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before the final, they went into the game and they said to each other, like, let's play like we're kids. It filled me with both awe and fear of like, oh, my gosh, like, how how will we keep up with them? My 10 year old son predicted them in his pool and he might have been the only only one. But it was because he had watched Spain play the USA with me. And, you know, they could play beautifully. And the fact that they could rise out of all of that adversity. And I think any female player can tell you, you just want to play the game and you learn how to shut everything else out. And I think the Spain team did that and cared about each other. And you could see that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So tell me how the focus goes from this historic accomplishment by a team of women to being on this guy, Luis Rubiales, who is the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation. You know, there's a lot of euphoria when you win a World Cup. And I think we just saw sort of the culture of the Federation at play. And seeing the demonstrations of affection took a lot of people aback. He grabbed his own crotch and started doing a sort of Michael Jackson-esque celebration in front of the Queen of Spain and the Princess of Spain. The crowning moment was when he grabbed Jenny Hermosa's cheeks, pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips and then went on down the line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the cameras picked up this kiss and it caused a huge, huge sensation. So after the game, Jenny Hermosa and her teammates are in the locker room. They're celebrating. She's eating a brownie. Someone shows her the moment. And there's an Instagram live video. And you see her face and you see her kind of reacting to it. Then she says, what was I supposed to do? And, you know, I didn't like it. And she's kind of incredulous. And then she's interviewed later on the radio and she downplays it. She says, you know, it was the emotion of the moment. There's nothing more there because she doesn't want this to be what the conversation is about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like she wants to talk about the World Cup, how they just put on an absolute show. She doesn't want to talk about being kissed. But then, you know, the media storm just grows and grows and grows. They're making a fool of us around the world because of this. That a macho and mafia person is representing us. We won't tolerate it. And after mounting pressure, the Spanish Football Association called a general assembly where the president was expected to resign. Instead, he announced...
--:-- Luis Rubiales: Is that so serious that I have to leave while having done the best job for Spanish football? Do you really believe that I have to resign? Well, I'm going to tell you something. I will not resign. I will not resign. I will not resign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Rubiales says, oh, it was consensual and she told me I could kiss her. The World Cup winning squad has issued a statement in which Jenny Hermoso insisted that the kiss was not consensual. I want to clarify that at no time did I consent to the kiss. I don't tolerate that my word is questioned. And the Federation has his back. They accuse Hermoso of lying and they initially say, yeah, no, he's not going anywhere. You guys are being crazy.
--:-- Lane Green: I think a sad truth of this situation with the Women's World Cup win is that more people have now probably heard about this kiss than who actually watched the match. What does this kiss and the uproar around it tell us about Spain right now? Well, the uproar around it actually, I think, is good news in a weird way because it really shows you how far Spain has come.
--:-- Lane Green: I think 20, 30, 40 years ago, the average societal sexism, you know, unwanted grabs and kisses and compliments and street harassment were as common or more common in Spain than they are in any other Western country. I think that the uproar, the opposition to what happened has been almost across the board politically, in the media.
--:-- Lane Green: And it really shows that a society has come a long, long way. Forty, fifty years ago, Spain was a very conservative country. Today, it's a country where feminism is both pretty broad and pretty deep, and there's not really a lot of prominent voices reacting against the reaction. In other words, most people are on the side of Jenny Hermoso, who was kissed against her will, and not on the side of Luis Rubiales, the head of the Football Federation, who kissed her.
--:-- Lane Green: Tell me about the progression of feminism in Spain and how it compares to other Western European nations. Yeah, it's a very uneven progress. In 1975, Francisco Franco died. Inside the Pardo Palace, eight miles from Madrid, Francisco Franco, head of state, head of the army, the man who's dominated Spain for 36 years, still fights for his life.
--:-- Lane Green: And he led what he called a national Catholic dictatorship in which women needed permissions to do basic things, to travel, to open bank accounts, and to be fully independent citizens. It was very, very, very old-fashioned Catholic and conservative. As a result of that, while the rest of Western Europe was progressing in terms of women's liberation and autonomy... Free our system! Free ourselves! What do we want? Equal to! When do we want to? Now!
--:-- Lane Green: It was like a court coming out of a bottle in the 1980s. There was this kind of explosion of sexual liberation and personal freedoms. It really moved the needle a very, very long way in a very, very short time. So Spain went from being one of the most conservative countries in this regard to very quickly being, I think, one of the most feminist in Europe.
--:-- Lane Green: I think a lot of outsiders might think of Spain in sort of Southern European terms still today and compare it with Italy or maybe countries in North Africa almost. Whereas if you live in Spain, you see a deeply feminist country that is more like Scandinavia in many respects than it is like that Franco dictatorship that I was talking about.
--:-- Lane Green: If you look at the government today, it's more than half female. Spain's new socialist prime minister has described his picks for cabinet. His choices are all pro-European Union, and the women outnumber the men. There are 13 ministers, I believe, of 24 who are women. But not only that, but they're all the powerful ministries. The ministry of economy, of finance, of defence, of industry, of labour.
--:-- Lane Green: What you might think of as traditionally kind of macho jobs in the past, I think, when people wanted to have more women in government. They traditionally gave them jobs like culture and education. And now we're really seeing all of the top jobs, except the very top job, the prime ministers, being held by women. Spain has never had a woman prime minister, but its first three deputy prime ministers are all women.
--:-- Lane Green: You see it socially. The 8th of March is International Women's Day, and you get these massive celebrations and protests in the street, big, big marches. We are protesting for equality, for the rights of women, to show we are not inferior. We want to work, live in peace, to have the same rights as any man because we are people.
--:-- Lane Green: And they're still quite militant, you know. They're not just celebrations of sisterhood and solidarity, but very much demanding, you know, the onward march of progress in terms of equal pay, in terms of prosecutions of rapes and so forth. And so it's a very, very outwardly feminist society. And, you know, one of the few areas where it's not is this business of the high levels of sport in the way a lot of companies are run as well, because sport is, of course, also a business.
--:-- Lane Green: It's funny, yeah, because you did allude earlier to the fact that this is sort of counterintuitive, that this moment of overt sexism that we saw on this global stage could actually be a good thing for feminism in Spain. But how does this progressive country with higher marks on feminism than some of its peers also ignore the claims of its players in the lead up to this World Cup?
--:-- Lane Green: Well in the lead to the World Cup there were a couple of issues one of which is equal pay And that one that sadly has really been seen in lots of countries The U women national team of course is very out and public about their demands for equal pay A gender pay gap has been at the crux of a long-running legal dispute between U.S. soccer and its players. Those demands now met with an historic agreement. And that has been seen elsewhere.
--:-- Lane Green: There were also some complaints from the women's team in Spain about their coach. But by and large, Spanish women's sport is very eagerly followed there. They broke the attendance record for the biggest crowd at a women's sporting event in anywhere, for any event, for a semifinal for the European Champions League in a game where the Barcelona women's team played Wolfsburg from Germany in the semifinal and backed in 91,000 people into Barcelona Stadium.
--:-- Lane Green: Barcelona have done it. Barcelona take the Champions League crowd. But of course, this man at the center of this story, unfortunately, Luis Rubiales, he has been fighting this tooth and nail. Is anyone in Spanish society defending him? I mean, naturally, there are going to be some. There's not 100% of Spanish society on anything. Spain has its sort of culture wars that are in some way sadly reminiscent of America's over gender, over various other things, some specific to Spain and some, you know, quite international.
--:-- Lane Green: Protesters gathered outside Spain's justice ministry in Madrid on Wednesday, enraged by the controversial ruling that cleared five men of gang raping an 18-year-old woman. I'd say that the unanimity of the criticism is really the striking thing and the rarity of the voices that are speaking out in Ruby Alice's favor are what really strikes me.
--:-- Lane Green: I mean, I did see a clip of a TV presenter saying, you know, oh, so what are men supposed to do today? If I see a woman struggling to get her suitcase up on the rack in a train, am I allowed to help her now? Well, the answer from many commentators on Twitter is, yes, of course, you say, do you need help? And if she says yes, then you help her. And if she says no, then you don't. It's that simple. And also you don't kiss your employees against their will.
--:-- Lane Green: So there are still some dinosaurs who are acting as though this is some incredibly new, complicated, difficult situation. But there are just as many, and quite a few of them even men, coming right out and saying, look, guys, this is not that complicated. Do be a good person. help women. Do not kiss them against their will. If you're not sure, ask them.
--:-- Lane Green: And of course, Rubiales himself has said that the kiss was consensual and that he sort of said, would you like a kiss, you know, un pico, you know, would you like a peck? And she said, okay. So he's saying that she agreed to it beforehand. I don't know that that story will hold up, but there will be, as with the case of after a call, refereeing decisions, we'll see a lot of video of this and hear more about it.
--:-- Lane Green: He also grabbed his crotch in front of the queen and the princess of Spain, though. Yes, he did. And he did sort of apologize for that. What's really condemned him is two things. First, that he did it was one thing. It's bad enough. But he second come out and lied about it. I think a lot of people feel like he said that her story was false and his is true. And he's calling one of their champions, now a national Spanish champion, a liar. And that looks really bad.
--:-- Lane Green: And then he's also grabbed the attention by going out and giving this defiant speech a few days ago. He really grabbed the spotlight for himself. And so we're all talking about him and not this great triumph by the Spanish women. And let's talk about the second triumph of the Spanish women to get so much of the country behind them in this moment, to get so much of the world behind them in this moment. What does that mean for this team and for this country?
--:-- Lane Green: I think it means a kind of no going back. This moment can really be compared to the Me Too moment in the U.S. five, six years ago with Harvey Weinstein. And of course, Me Too had really international effects too. It was discussed and it had its effects in France and Spain and European countries too. But I think the reckoning was probably not as deep and as thoroughgoing.
--:-- Lane Green: And now you're seeing a Spanish hashtag, Seacabal, which means it's over, going around. And Spanish commentators are calling it Spain's Me Too. We'll remember this moment 20 years from now in Spain. As we remember Me Too and Harvey Weinstein, as we remember the murder of George Floyd, I think it's going to be one of those things that kind of marks a turning point.
--:-- Lane Green: I think that this really puts Spanish boarding women on the kind of equal playing field that they've had, I think, in some areas like politics that I mentioned before, but have not had in other areas. You know the progress of spanish feminism has been really spectacular but also uneven and i think that winning the championship and being the best in the world and then also facing this you know it's kind of a double it is a double win it is it is a way of saying we beat we beat england we beat everybody that came before them but it finally put our foot down and said no and i think that moment is a victory and i think it will be remembered by people who are not top class athletes because it goes to everyday workplaces.
--:-- Lane Green: It goes to how your bosses treat you, not just on the football pitch, but also just at any workplace.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lane Green, Madrid Bureau Chief of The Economist, economist.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The program today was produced by Halima Shah with help from John Aarons. We were edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by David Herman. Thanks to Alana Casanova-Burgis and Daniela Larcon, this is Today Explained. We'll be right back.
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