In the midst of the Rubiales affair, Spain is experiencing a new high-profile case of sexual assault. A man was arrested in Madrid after putting his hand on a journalist’s buttocks during a live television broadcast, the national police announced on Tuesday, September 12. The controversy began early Tuesday afternoon when a live broadcast from the journalist, Isa Balado, was broadcast on the Cuatro television channel, who was in a street in Madrid reporting on a robbery.
While she holds her microphone in front of the camera, a man comes into the shot from behind and puts his hand on her buttocks. The young woman then asks him to let her work. On set, the presenter, a colleague of the journalist, intervenes: “Sorry Isa, I’m interrupting you but did he put a hand on your ass there? “. He demands to be able to speak to the man in question: “Hand me that idiot,” he says.
The journalist confirms the gesture and addresses the attacker again to ask him to let her work. The camera then shows the man, who is wearing sunglasses and who denies having touched her buttocks. While she asks him to leave the premises, the individual strokes her hair before leaving.
On set, while the young woman apologizes, the presenter does not lose his temper and declares: “We filmed it (…). You don’t have to be sorry. You do your job and then comes this idiot who touches your ass live without any rights. » The television said on its website that it had called the police.
For one of the channel’s star journalists, Diego Losada, very famous in Spain, “attacking Isa is like attacking any of us. In a society that we want to be better, it can no longer happen like this, this feeling of impunity can no longer exist.”
Acting Equality Minister Irene Montero, for her part, wrote on X: “Non-consensual touching is sexual violence and we say enough to impunity.”
For three weeks, Spain has been agitated by the affair of the president of the Spanish football federation Luis Rubiales who resigned following his kiss on the mouth and by surprise given to the player Jennifer Hermoso after the world coronation of the Feminine roja.
Luis Rubiales is summoned on Friday by an investigating judge “to be heard as an accused” and to respond to the accusations of “sexual assault” brought against him. Luis Rubiales spoke in an interview with journalist Piers Morgan and broadcast Tuesday on the British channel TalkTV. Still denying the facts. “It was a reciprocal act. (…) She lifted me, she lifted me in the air (…) We were both moved. When we touched down, I had a brief exchange with her, we congratulated each other. I gave him a quick kiss. I asked him, can I give you a little kiss? Which is normal in our country (…) I remember that she gave me one or two pats on the sides. She laughed, and that was it. »