CGTN Europe spoke to a Spanish football journalist Semra Hunter about the consequences of the scandal that rocked the football world.
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00:00Let's talk to Samara Hunter who's a Spanish football journalist. Thanks for coming on the
00:03program. Now, Rubiales says it's a witch hunt. What is the mood, the public mood around this trial?
00:11It's pretty much picking up where it left off last year whenever we had the hearings around
00:16whether this was even going to go to trial in the first place. There's still a lot of outpouring of
00:21support for Jenny Hermoso pretty much across the board. There's a lot of members of government
00:26that have also spoken out publicly today wishing her a lot of luck, hoping that there's going to
00:30be justice for Jenny Hermoso and for women across society. They're hoping that this will be a
00:35watershed moment if in fact it does go in favor of Jenny Hermoso because they believe that there
00:40will be a massive spillover effect in how we can actually change normalized behavior when it comes
00:45to sexist behavior that is so deeply entrenched in Spanish society and Spanish culture. So it's a
00:50massive, massive ordeal. You can imagine that so many people are watching with a lot of attention,
00:55with a lot of care and a lot of interest in Spain. It's got wall-to-wall media coverage.
01:00It's trending on social media. A lot of people are very much interested to see how this one
01:06definitely does pan out. And it's not just in Spain, of course. There's a lot of interest
01:10that has been captivating audiences all around the world to see how this does in fact play out.
01:16This kiss happened 18 months ago, eclipsing Spain's first women's World Cup victory.
01:22Has anything changed in terms of redressing machismo in sport?
01:28Actually, yes. Thankfully, there has been a little bit of incremental change,
01:32at least specifically as it pertains to the women's national team and women's football
01:37in Spain. Actually, La Liga F, which is the domestic league for Spanish women's football,
01:43they actually had a strike last year in the summer. They were asking for better pay
01:48and they boycotted for the first few weeks of the season. They eventually got their way. They
01:52were able to have an increase in pay. They were able to make some changes as it relates to the
01:56overall working conditions for these players at their respective clubs within the national team
02:01itself. They also boycotted going to several games until they were able to have an agreement
02:07put into place with the federation itself. There was a lot of players, sorry, a lot of members of
02:13the federation who left. They were pushed out, you could say, by the players. There was a bit of
02:19a changeover in terms of personnel. But beyond that, they were able to get some of the demands
02:24met, which is something that they'd been asking for for many, many years as it related to equal
02:28pay, as it related to equal infrastructure in terms of changing the way that women's football
02:35is structured within the federation. Basically, what the players wanted was to be treated the
02:39same way as the men. And one of the most symbolic changes that they actually made was a rebrand of
02:44the Spanish national team. They now just call it the Spanish national football team, rather than
02:48the men's team or the women's team. And the idea, the message behind that is that football is just
02:53football and they don't want to separate it by gender. So there has been some small steps taken.
02:58Of course, still many more do need to happen, but at least it is a start.
03:02Semra, this goes beyond football, doesn't it? Beyond sport. The government's brought in reforms
03:07aimed at boosting gender equality more generally. So how much of an impact is all of that likely to
03:13have? Well, hopefully it will continue to make even more of an impact. As you say, there was a
03:19new law that was put into place called, I believe it's called the Equal Representation Law, but they
03:24are trying to balance the scales when it comes to politics, to businesses, to administration. They
03:28want to make sure that at least there's 40% represented, whether it's by men or women,
03:34to make it as close as even as possible. And that allows more room for women to actually access
03:39higher positions within major organizations and places where they can actually have impactful
03:45change on decisions that are to be made. Beyond that as well, there was the law of only yes is yes,
03:51meaning that now, if there is no consent when it comes to any kind of situation where it could be
03:58a male or a female, but if they found themselves in a situation of sexual abuse, if there is no
04:02consent legally, they are now going to be protected, whereas before that was not necessarily
04:06the case. So there have been small changes made. Again, it is a very slow process as bureaucracy
04:13tends to be, but at least there is a lot more conversation now in the wider public and more
04:19conversation in the workspace as well. Whereas before these kinds of things were never really
04:23discussed, people never really felt comfortable about it, or they tried to pretend like these
04:27things were never actually happening. So there's much more of an awareness now, there is a shift
04:32in consciousness across the board. And it has been positive, I think we can say in that sense.
04:37And hopefully over time, we will see much more meaningful impact and changes actually put into
04:42place in wider society.