00:00 Well, let's talk a bit more about this story then. I'm pleased to be joined from Madrid
00:04 by Stuart Turnbull Ducati. He's an associate professor in political science at Southampton
00:10 University where he does look into Spanish politics and societal issues. Thanks for joining
00:15 us on the programme today, sir.
00:17 Thanks very much.
00:18 Pressure really mounting on Ruby Alice within the last 24 hours. Do you think he can survive
00:25 this now?
00:26 I don't think there's any way for him to survive this. I mean, Spain is a country that's kind
00:31 of marked by high levels of polarisation between people of different parties, people of different
00:36 ideological leanings. And whilst your report there mentioned there is a small amount of
00:39 backlash, I think public consensus, both amongst the average individual in the street and amongst
00:44 political players is that his time is up.
00:49 If that's the case, though, how has he managed to remain in the job for the last week? He
00:54 must have some base of support then.
00:57 I think that's also one of the major critiques that the government has faced from the Conservative
01:02 parties basically who are in opposition, have kind of critiqued the government whilst they
01:05 support the idea of removing Ruby Alice from the head of the Spanish Football Federation.
01:10 They've been criticised for being so slow in doing so. And I think this is because the
01:14 government basically hasn't used lots of the mechanisms it has available to it. It kind
01:18 of assumed that the Spanish Football Federation would kind of self-govern itself. But as we
01:23 saw at the end of last week when Ruby Alice came out at the end of the week saying that
01:27 there was under no circumstances was he going to resign. It's only then that the government
01:30 decided to kind of up the ante and engage those different mechanisms that it has at
01:35 its disposal to remove him.
01:37 And we're looking at images now of the rally in support of Hermoso that took place yesterday.
01:44 And during that rally, the country's minister for Labour said this story exposes the worst
01:50 of Spanish society, in particular, structural sexism in the country. I wonder whether you'd
01:56 agree with that analysis of what we've seen this past week.
02:00 I mean, I certainly don't disagree. I mean, the issue of sexism in Spain has been one
02:05 that's been politicised for a number of years now, kind of demonstrated by this AIDs of
02:10 M movement, which is a large feminist movement that's taking place across Spain. And the
02:14 issue of sexism and misogynistic violence against women was also observed in the recent
02:22 electoral politics that took place in Spain a few months ago when we had election. I mean,
02:26 the Spanish government minister and also the kind of sitting vice president of Spain have
02:31 kind of came out very openly against sexism in Spain. That's kind of one of the poster
02:35 issues that's attached to parties, largely on the left, but it's also one that parties
02:39 in the right are also facing pressure on.
02:43 Given that then, and the fact that across the political spectrum there is broad criticism
02:48 of Rubiales, is it fair to say that Spain's sort of feminist movement has made great progress
02:55 in recent years and that Rubiales is almost a dinosaur who hasn't quite understood that
02:59 times really have changed?
03:02 I think times are definitely changing in Spain. And this is kind of a poster moment for the
03:07 country where they're able to kind of correct some injustices related to women's rights
03:10 and feminism and the kind of lack of progress in women's issues. But the fact that this
03:16 is a large media event in itself kind of signals that there is a lot of work to do. I mean,
03:21 just on Thursday and Friday when Rubiales came out and said he wasn't going to resign,
03:26 when you look around the room in that moment, there's a number of high profile men applauding
03:30 in that moment that Leigh Hare have kind of had to double back on their positions, they
03:34 kind of come out to critique Rubiales because they realise that this kind of behaviour is
03:38 no longer acceptable.
03:40 Stuart Turnbull, Douguete, thank you very much indeed, sir, for your time on France
03:45 24.
03:46 Thank you very much.
