Real Madrid have a legal headline to deal with on an otherwise quiet post-deadline morning. Centre-back Raul Asencio has been convicted of drink-driving in Gran Canaria after being stopped at a routine police checkpoint last month, with the defender handed a five-figure fine and an eight-month driving ban. The Raul Asencio Real Madrid story is one nobody at Valdebebas wanted this week, and it arrives while he is still working his way back from injury.
What happened on the GC-1
The details were first reported by Canarian outlet Atlantico Hoy and picked up by Marca and Mundo Deportivo. According to those reports, Asencio was stopped at around 6.30am on 16 August at a Guardia Civil traffic checkpoint at kilometre 37.5 of the GC-1 motorway in the south of Gran Canaria, driving his Porsche Macan GTS through an area busy with nightlife.
Two breath tests returned a reading of 0.90 mg/l. The legal maximum in Spain is 0.25 mg/l, so the reading was close to four times over the limit. Crucially, anything above 0.60 mg/l stops being an administrative matter in Spanish law and becomes a criminal offence against road safety, which is why this ended up in front of a judge rather than on a penalty notice. He was not involved in a collision and was not reported for reckless driving.
The Raul Asencio Real Madrid fine and driving ban
Asencio accepted the penalty rather than contest it, and was convicted three days later, on 19 August, in an expedited hearing at San Bartolome de Tirajana. As Managing Madrid also reported, the sentence was a fine of €14,400 — calculated as four months at a daily rate of €120 — plus the withdrawal of his driving licence for eight months.
By the standards of Spanish road-safety cases that is a routine outcome at that reading, and the matter is now closed: the quick-trial procedure resolved it in a single sitting. For a Real Madrid first-team player, though, the reputational cost lands rather differently to the financial one.
Where it leaves him at the Bernabeu
The timing is grim. Asencio has not kicked a ball competitively this season after picking up a muscle problem in pre-season, and Los Blancos are working towards having him available again in the middle of this month. We covered the original diagnosis when it came out of Valdebebas in our report on his injury.
His position in the squad was already awkward. Madrid spent much of the summer trying to find him a new club and never got a deal over the line, so he stayed — a thread that ran right through to the closing hours of the window, as we set out in our deadline-day piece. With Dean Huijsen and Ibrahima Konate the preferred pairing, Antonio Rudiger still in the building and Eder Militao due back later this month, Jose Mourinho‘s centre-back depth chart has Asencio some way down it.
That matters, because the route back into a Mourinho side is rarely sentimental. The Portuguese has been unbending about fitness levels and standards since taking charge at the Bernabeu in July, and a player returning from a lay-off with a conviction on file has ground to make up before he is anywhere near a matchday squad.
A separate court date this week
Asencio is also due in court in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria across three sessions on 3, 4 and 7 September in a separate case, unconnected to the driving offence, in which he is one of four defendants alongside three former Real Madrid academy players. Per Canarias 7, cited by Mundo Deportivo, the provincial prosecutor’s office is reported to be prepared to withdraw the charges against him if the complainants confirm in open court the pardon they have offered. No verdict has been reached in that case and nothing has been proven against any of the defendants.
Real Madrid have made no public comment on the drink-driving conviction. Los Blancos return to La Liga away at Real Betis after the international break, and Asencio is not expected to feature.
