Top Spanish court rules non-consensual hand kiss is sexual assault

General view of Spain's Supreme Court in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, June 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that kissing a person’s hand without their consent constitutes sexual assault rather than street harassment, according to a decision obtained by AFP on Monday.

The ruling upheld the sexual assault conviction of a man who in 2023 kissed a woman’s hand without her consent at a bus stop in Alcobendas, a suburb of Madrid, and gestured for her to accompany him while offering money.

The defendant’s lawyers had sought to reclassify the act as mere street harassment, but the court found that any physical contact of a sexual nature goes beyond that category. It said the man had “acted with the intention of violating her sexual integrity”, according to the ruling dated March 5.

“There was therefore an act of sexual assault, insofar as the action describes contact of a sexual nature and tone that the victim had no obligation to endure, with clearly sexual content and an infringement upon the victim by reducing her to an object,” the court added.

The court ordered the man to pay a fine of more than 1,500 euros (£1,280), as imposed in his original conviction.

Spain, a leader in combating gender-based violence, in 2022 toughened its laws on rape by requiring explicit consent for sexual acts, a move long demanded by survivors and women’s rights groups.

In 2025, a Spanish court convicted the former head of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, of sexual assault over an unsolicited kiss he gave forward Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Sydney, fining him 10,800 euros.