Real Madrid defender Raul Asencio will stand trial in September over the alleged sharing of intimate footage involving a minor, despite both alleged victims withdrawing their complaints against him.
Asencio is facing two charges — allegedly distributing the video without consent, and allegedly sharing a sex tape involving a minor. He will stand trial alongside three of his former Madrid youth-team team-mates. Ferran Ruiz, Juan Rodriguez and Andres Garcia are facing charges over allegedly recording and distributing videos of sexual content of a minor and one other woman.
On Thursday, the case judge dismissed all the arguments put forward by defence lawyers for all four men in the preliminary hearing ahead of the trial, which will take place in Gran Canaria on September 3, 4 and 7 this year.
The defence lawyers had argued for evidence to be struck from the record, including that obtained from the seizure of the phones of defendants by the Spanish police.
In court documents seen by The Athletic, the judge declared such seizures “do not require the consent of the owners” of the phones, and added: “All the defendants made backups to their cloud account to delete contents before their arrests, in a clear attempt to thwart the investigation of the reported events.”
The case centres on the filming, allegedly without consent, of a sexual encounter in the private area of a beach club in the Canary Islands in June 2023, as well as the alleged distribution of the video, again without consent.
Asencio is not accused of having been involved in the incident or the filming of it, but it was alleged that he asked for the videos and showed them to another friend, which would constitute two crimes against privacy, per Article 77 of the Spanish Criminal Code.
The 23-year-old is charged with disclosure and transfer to third parties of images captured without consent under article 197.1.3 paragraphs 2 and 5 of the Criminal Code.
Each of the alleged victims has now withdrawn their allegations against Asencio, but the judge has ruled that each victim must repeat this stance in court for it to be considered. Both alleged victims have accused the other three defendants: Ruiz, Rodriguez and Garcia.
Asencio made his Real Madrid debut in November 2024 (Angel Martinez/Getty Images
Asencio has always maintained his innocence. In May 2025, he released a statement which included: “I have not participated in any behaviour that violated the sexual freedom of any woman, much less of minors.
“In the event that charges are finally brought and an oral trial is opened, I will continue to exercise my defence before the Courts and Tribunals, in which I maintain full confidence, reaffirming that I am not involved in any criminal conduct.”
In August last year, the Prosecutor’s Office called for a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for Asencio, along with prison sentences for each of the three other men. A case summary provided by prosecutors to The Athletic also claimed that the alleged victims were both suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the events.
Asencio, born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, has played 80 times for Real Madrid. He has previously been called up to Spain’s national team but has yet to make an appearance.
How did the allegations emerge?
A complaint was filed by the younger of the two girls, accompanied by her mother, at Guardia Civil offices in the town of Santa Maria de Guia, close to Las Palmas in the north of Gran Canaria, on September 6, 2023. Subsequently, the second alleged victim also filed a complaint.
According to their testimony, which was leaked in Spanish media that year, the girls asked the players involved to delete the footage the same day they found out they had been recorded.
One of the girls also said, speaking anonymously in an interview with Spanish newspaper Diario AS in September 2023, that the players told them they would delete the footage but had instead “transferred it to other mobiles”.
According to their leaked testimony, the girls also said they did not find out until August that the footage still existed and was allegedly being shared. They said they found out the footage had not been deleted when an acquaintance told them he had seen the video.
On September 15, 2023, several Guardia Civil police officers turned up at Madrid’s training facilities, dressed in civilian clothes. There, they asked the director of the youth academy, Manuel Fernandez, to accompany them to the changing rooms.
Three players were arrested, while Asencio was spoken to, but only as a witness. During the taking of statements, he went from being a witness to being investigated as a suspect.
