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. 

Villajoyosa’s team, CR La Vila, plays in the top division of Spanish rugby, the División de Honor. Spain’s best club sides come to play here. That’s quite something for a little town like ours.

And last season (2025/6), los vileros played their best rugby for years, beating some top teams and finishing in the top half of the elite División de Honor. They also got through to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, Spanish rugby’s knockout cup competition for the first time in 16 years.

A great stadium! 

La Vila has a great little stadium at el Estadio del Pantano, a few minutes drive out of town on the road to Orxeta. It’s as good as any of their rivals in the top division of Spanish rugby. I’m guessing more than a few clubs back in the UK would also love the facilities they have here.

The crowd is usually a friendly mix of local supporters and expat or tourist Brits getting their rugby fix. Let’s face it, for British fans, watching rugby on the Costa Blanca in warm sunshine certainly beats the biting wind and driving rain back home.

Villajoyosa isn’t natural rugby country though. Most of the big names in Spanish rugby are from the north of Spain – Valladolid and Burgos, for example – or Madrid. These teams get the big-name sponsors.

To try to match their financial firepower, CR La Vila did a sponsorship deal in the 2023/4 season with Chocolates Valor, the town’s big chocolate producer. So the club is officially now known as ‘Club de Rugby (CR) Huesitos La Vila’.

Huesitos is their top-selling chocolate bar, in case you were wondering (they’re a bit like a cross between a British KitKat and Maltesers!)

The 2026/7 season

La Vila had the toughest start to the new season – away to the 2025/6 champions, VRAC from Valladolid, in their first match. Perhaps not surprisingly, they went down 40-24.

But they came storming back the following week in their first home game. Against a powerful Santboiana side from Cataluña, they were battered in the first half, but managed to snatch a remarkable 36-33 victory thanks to a last-minute drop goal.

.Check out the match results here  Check the league standings here.

Copa del Rey

The Copa del Rey is Spanish rugby’s cup competiton. The División de Honor teams compete against each other, plus teams from the division below. They start off in four groups of five, competing in November and December.

Last season, La Vila had their best run in the competition for a very long time. They won through to the semi-finals for the first time in 16 years, though they lost in Madrid to Complutense Cisneros.

CR La Vila’s mens’ first team is a mixture of home grown players with a sprinkling of overseas talent, mostly from South America. Follow the club on Instagram and Facebook. 

La Vila run women’s teams – they’ve combined forces with Alicante club Akra – and also run squads for a whole range of age groups, so it’s a real community club.

Benidorm Sevens 

The La Vila stadium also hosts the Benidorm Sevens in May each year with men’s and women’s teams from across Europe and even further afield.

Beach rugby

La Vila hosts a European beach rugby tournament on the town’s Playa Centro – highlights from 2026 here.

Beach rugby games are five minutes each way with five players in each team, plus seven subs who can come on or off at any time. Tries are 1 point. The pitches are small (25 x 25m). Just as well in the heat of summer!

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.

International rugby

Los Leones are Spain’s national men’s side, and they’re currently 17th in the world rankings. Sadly, they can’t boast of being the top side on the Iberian peninsula these days – Portugal vaulted above them with that stunning victory over Fiji in the 2023 World Cup.

Spain, like Portugal, play in the second tier of European rugby, below the Six Nations. That means they’re up against the likes of Georgia, ranked 12 and usually the strongest side. This year though (2026), Portugal managed to beat Georgia to the Rugby Europe Championship final, with Spain coming third. Check out how Los Leones are doing here.

Los Leones and the World Cup

Los Leones have had a tricky time with the Rugby World Cup in recent years. To put it mildly.

They thought they’d qualified for the last tournament in France in 2023. But they got kicked out for fielding an ineligible player. It was a scandal that rocked Spanish rugby. Astonishingly, that was the second time in successive World Cup campaigns that Spain had breached player eligibility rules. The president of Spanish rugby resigned.

But it all came good in February 2025, when Los Leones qualified for the next World Cup in Australia in 2027, beating Switzerland. It’s been a very long wait – 36 years to be precise – since they last went to a World Cup.  Watch highlights of the Swiss game here.

Could Spain host the World Cup?

In April 2025, news broke that Spain are bidding to host the 2035 men’s World Cup. That’s quite a turnaround, given the rather chequered history that Los Leones have enjoyed with World Rugby in the past.

The plan is for the final to be staged at the rebuilt Camp Nou in Barcelona. Other football venues could include the refurbished Bernabeu in Madrid and the San Mames stadium in Bilbao, which has already hosted a Champions Cup final. It’s a serious bid – Spain have ambitions to break into the Six Nations in the next few years. More here.

Spain will find out next November (2027) if they’ve won the right to host.

Nations Cup

Spain will also feature in the new World Rugby Nations Championship from 2026, which will be held every two years. The idea is that there will be two divisions. The top division will feature the Six Nations teams and the southern hemisphere big-hitters, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina plus Fiji and Japan.

The second division will include Spain alongside Canada, Chile, Georgia, Hong Kong China, Portugal, Romania, Samoa, Tonga, Uruguay, USA and Zimbabwe. From 2030, there’ll be promotion and relegation between the two divisions. Check how the teams stand here.

Sevens rugby 

Spain has a world class men’s Sevens team. They even managed to beat the mighty All Blacks in the 2024 Dubai 7s  – check out the highlights here. That victory put them in the final, where sadly they lost to Fiji. But then, most teams lose to Fiji at Sevens!

Spain finished 7th in the 2026 HSBC SVNS tournament, beating Great Britain into 8th place.

Las Leonas

The Spanish women’s team – Las Leonas – are officially ranked 14th in the world. That’s significantly higher than the men. And they qualified for this year’s World Cup in England in August 2025.

They were up against tough opposition in their group though – New Zealand, Ireland and Japan. All three treams were ranked above Spain, and they lost against all three. 

They do remain the dominant side in Europe’s second tier. They won the 2026 Rugby Europe championship in April for the ninth year in a row. It’s a four-cornered tournament with Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium.

And they only just failed to beat Canada – then ranked number 2 in the world –  losing by one point (26-27) in June 2024, in a match played at La Vila’s stadium.

Spain and the Super Cup

The Super Cup started in the 2021-2 season and involved new franchised teams competing across Europe under the umbrella of Rugby Europe. There’s one Spanish team involved; a newly-created franchise called Castilla y Léon Iberians, made up of players mostly from the two Valladolid clubs (VRAC and El Salvador) plus Burgos.

They compete against teams from Portugal (Los Lusitanos), Georgia (Black Lion) and Israel (Tel Aviv Heat) in pool A, while in Pool B are teams from Czechia (Bohemia Warriors), Belgium (Brussels Devils), Romania (Wolves) and the Netherlands (Delta).  Russia used to field a team but they were kicked out after the Ukraine invasion.

The whole thing is a knockout competition designed to raise the level of the club game in European countries outside the Six Nations.

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

For more on the Super Cup, see here.

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!

Want to know more about La Vila?

Check out these posts:

• My top ten things to do in Villajoyosa
• Best places to eat and drink in La Vila
• Exploring the old town of Villajoyosa
• Villajoyosa’s amazing beaches