The mother of Spain’s disgraced football chief Luis Rubiales was hospitalized on Wednesday evening, just two and a half days after she began a hunger strike to get justice for her son.
Angeles Bejar locked herself inside a church in the village of Motril on Monday. She said that she would not eat until the female player whom her son kissed on the lips "told the truth" and publicly stated that she consented to the kiss.
The pastor of the Motril church told the media that Bejar has a “crisis” and will not return to the church.
“Besides being tired, she got very nervous,” the pastor said, adding that she felt dizzy, anemic and “that something wasn’t right.”
The pastor said he had only seen Bejar drink water and the Aquarius sports drink since Monday. "She was very uncomfortable," he added.
Bejar had originally said that she would remain in the church as long as it took to bring to end the “witch-hunt” against her son, the now-suspended chief of Spain's football federation. She told the media that he was the victim and that player Jennifer Hermoso was lying about not consenting to have her boss kiss her on the lips.
Her son stands at the center of one of the biggest scandals in the history of Spanish sport.
First, he was criticized for kissing Hermoso while celebrating the women's World Cup victory. However, his refusal to apologize, insistence that Hermoso wanted the “peck” and a tirade against feminists triggered a tsunami of backlash.
After his shockingly defiant speech on Friday, more than 80 of Spain’s top female football players announced that they would not play for Spain’s national team until there was a change in leadership. His federation then threatened legal action against the female players.
However, on Saturday, Fifa temporarily suspended Rubiales from his post and ordered him to avoid contact with Hermoso. On Monday, in a major backtrack, Spain’s football federation requested that he resign permanently.
Spanish authorities are also in the process of filing sanctions against him.
Hermoso, for her part, has publicly stated that she never wanted the kiss and that Rubiales and those around him were pressuring her to say she did.
Rubiales has not been seen in public since Friday, although the church pastor told the media that he had been in contact with his mother.
