The Spanish play rugby! Who knew? In this football-obsessed country, rugby union is so far down the sport pecking order, you’d be forgiven for failing to notice it at all. But here in Villajoyosa/La Vila Joiosa, just up the coast from Alicante, rugby is alive and kicking.

CR La Vila is actually one of the best teams in Spain – quite something for a little town like ours. A home game at their stadium is a great way of spending a Sunday afternoon.   

Despite the disruption of Covid-19, CR La Vila had a terrific season in 2020/1. They didn’t lose a single match and topped it all off in May 2021 with promotion to the elite division of Spanish rugby, the División de Honor. They started the new 2021/2 season in fine style too – beating the league champions of the last five years, VRAC from Valladolid. Things haven’t gone too well since though – La Vila have only won four times and they’ll have to contest the end-of-season playoffs to stay in the top division.

La Vila play home games at el Estadio del Pantano, a few minutes drive out of town on the road inland to Orxeta. Tickets are €15 (€10 online) and kids under 16 get in free. The stadium and the next-door sports centre are great – I’m guessing more than a few clubs back in the UK would love the facilities they have here.

The crowd is usually a friendly mix of local supporters and expat or tourist Brits – plus a few French fans –  getting their rugby fix. Buy yourself a beer or something off the barbecue and enjoy the match.

For British rugby watchers, a game in the sunshine of La Vila certainly beats the biting wind and driving rain back home. And the quality of the rugby is not bad either.

The first team is a mixture of home grown players with a sprinkling of overseas talent, mostly from South America – though last season, a couple of Welsh players made quite an impact. And this season (2021/2) they’ve been competing with the best teams in Spain in the División de Honor. That’s pretty good going for a team this far south in Spain, a long way from the rugby heartlands in the north of Spain.

Check how they’re doing here, check the fixture list here or follow the club on their website on Twitter Instagram and Facebook. La Vila run women’s teams and squads for a range of age groups, so it’s a real local club.

Clearly rugby is never going to take the place of football – or even basketball – in the heart of your average Spanish sports fan. The Spanish movie star Javier Bardem, who played rugby himself in his younger days, was once quoted as saying; “being a rugby player in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Japan”. He had a point.

Los Leones and the World Cup

A massive sore point with Spanish rugby fans right now. Let me explain. In March 2022 Los Leones qualified for the rugby World Cup for only the second time in their history…see the celebrations here.

But the joy didn’t last long. Romania protested that Spain had fielded an ineligible player, the South African prop Gavin van den Berg, in two matches. World Rugby held an inquiry, found Spain guilty, threw them out of the World Cup and hit them with a big fine, amid dark accusations of a falsified passport. Romania go to the World Cup instead.

Astonishingly, this is the second time in two World Cup campaigns that Spain have been found guilty of breaking the rules on player eligibility. Unbelievable! Van den Berg’s club, Alcobendas of Madrid, have some serious questions to answer too…they’ve already been kicked out of the showpiece final of the Copa del Rey as a result of all this.

Up until this point, you could say rugby was a growing sport here. Los Leones were ranked 19 in the world and play in the second tier of European rugby, one below the Six Nations, against the likes of Georgia (easily the strongest side) Belgium, Portugal, Romania and – until the Ukraine invasion – Russia.

Spain has a decent men’s Sevens team too. They’ve competed at the Olympics and even managed to beat the mighty All Blacks in a World Rugby Sevens Series match in March 2019. Highlights here are worth a watch – the Spanish players look as if they can’t quite believe it!

Las Leonas

The Spanish women’s team – Las Leonas – are officially ranked 10th in the world. That’s higher than the men and ahead of top rugby countries like Wales and South Africa, though Las Leonas didn’t manage to qualify for the World Cup in New Zealand in 2022. They’re currently leading the Rugby Europe championship, but as it’s a three-cornered tournament with Russia and the Netherlands, who knows what will happen after the Ukraine crisis.

Super Cup

There’s a new show in town this season (21/22), at least in the men’s game. It’s called the Super Cup and it involves new franchised teams competing across Europe under the umbrella of Rugby Europe. There is one Spanish team involved; a newly-created franchise called Castilla y Léon Iberians, made up of players from the two Valladolid clubs (VRAC and El Salvador) plus Burgos.

They’re competing against teams from Portugal (Los Lusitanos), Belgium (Brussels Devils) and Holland (Delta) in the western pool. There’s an eastern pool with clubs from Georgia, Israel and Russia (until Ukraine happened). Surprisingly though, not Romania. The whole thing is a knockout competition designed to raise the level of the club game in European countries outside the Six Nations.

OK, something needs to happen to bridge the gap between the Six Nations and the rest of Europe, but I’m not a big fan of artificial franchises, of clubs that aren’t tied to their communities. 

Talking rugby in Spanish

If you’re ever in a Spanish rugby conversation, here are a few words to help you through. One or two might be Argentinian equivalents. If I’ve got any wrong, feel free to leave a note in comments!