Women's football in Spain

Women's football in Spain is governed by the Royal Spanish Football Federation. Currently there are two national competitions, the Liga F and the Copa de la Reina – which also feed into the Supercopa de España Femenina – in the professional club involved structure. Women's football in Spain historically and currently faces systemic misogyny.

Early history: 1910s–1930s
Women's football was recorded as being played in Spain as early as the 1910s. The first known women's football teams in Spain were founded in Barcelona in 1914, inspired by teams playing in England. A small football association, the Spanish Girl's Club, was set up and sponsored two teams, Montserrat and Giralda. They played their first match on 9 June 1914; both teams were initially coached by Jack Greenwell when he was also player-coach of FC Barcelona men's team, and then by Paco Bru. Despite becoming popular and playing well enough that one sports paper said they would soon be able to compete with men's second or youth teams, the teams did not last long. Their fortunes seemed to rest on a planned tour of France to play women's teams there, which was cancelled due to the outbreak of World War I, and Spanish Girl's Club stopped playing. Local newspapers continued to report on the women's teams in England, and suggested that women's football would soon reach Spain, but sportsmen and sport advocates in Spain espoused the belief that it was too dangerous or masculine.

In 1920, there was report of a football match between women's teams in Irun, albeit advertised by the skimpy kits the players would wear, setting the tone for press coverage during the decade. Some women in the 1920s found success playing in men's teams: teenage goalkeeper Irene González competed for minutes with Rodrigo García Vizoso, while Ana Carmona Ruiz dressed as a man to join teams. There was also an international women's match between a French XI and British XI held in Barcelona in 1923, and "one of the most important clubs" in Barcelona started a women's team this year, before Belgian women's teams toured Spain in 1925. However, the press was resistant to women's football: some exhibition games were played but were not treated seriously, and the desire for women's football caused media to make news of how masculine it was, while promoting the new English sport of netball in favour.

The outlook was more positive in the early 1930s, in conjunction with the growth of women's rights in the Second Spanish Republic, seeing high participation of women in sports. Several clubs that played football, among other sports, were founded during the decade, including Club Femení i d'Esports de Barcelona and Sección femenina de Hockey del Athletic Club de Madrid. In 1932, another association was created, this time in Valencia, for women's teams to play each other and develop the sport. It quickly sponsored four professional teams – Levante, España, Atlético and Valencia – which toured Spain and Latin America, while FC Barcelona added Ana María Martínez Sagi, who believed in feminism through sports, to its board of directors in 1934. The arrival of the Spanish Civil War effectively shut women out of football.

Franco dictatorship ban: 1930s–1975
Between the 1930s and 1975, during the Franco regime, women were forbidden from playing football. The Sección Femenina, a fascist pro-misogyny political advocacy group, was incorporated into the dictatorship during the regime, suppressing women's rights. The regime also suppressed lesbians. This ironically encouraged the growth of women's football in Barcelona, as a means of community-building, and several teams thrived; by 1970, in Spain, women's football teams were playing unacknowledged competitive matches and reportedly played "extremely well".

As the regime weakened in the late 1960s, women began returning to football across Spain, with the Sección Femenina actively spreading disinformation and officially banning the promotion of anything related to women's football to try and prevent this. Women began practicing athletics in Spain in 1960, when female relatives of male athletes began using the facilities at Montjuïc in Barcelona and, facing pushback, sought legal advice to say that as Barcelona citizens they could use any sports facility in the city; a decade later, Mundo Deportivo wrote that this set a precedent for women to play football, as the ban, something the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) took as a given, was probably not legal. The newspaper suggested that it would be reasonable for women's football to be brought under RFEF control rather than develop at its own pace. When UEFA polled its members in 1970, Spain was one of five that declined to provide information on women's football. At the time, there were several women's teams regularly training in Catalonia, where there was publicity, and about 20 in Biscay and Gipuzkoa of the Basque Country, where women's football in Spain was most developed. Women's matches had halves of half an hour.

In 1970, Barcelona Femení played to 60,000 at Camp Nou, in a double-header with the men's team, then to 40,000 in a Barcelona derby match in 1971. The first domestic women's league in Spain was played in 1971–72, featuring teams in Catalonia. Victoria Hernández then became the first female footballer to sign a "professional" contract – one stipulating remuneration per game played – in 1971. The RFEF did not recognize women's football until 1980.

Modern era: 1980s–
Women did not have a national league until 1988. In 2019 the Spanish FA committed to spending $20 million in the area of women's football.

National team
The Spain national football team has qualified three times for the FIFA World Cup, for the first time in 2015 and every World Cup since then. They qualified three times for the UEFA European Championship. Prior to winning the 2023 World Cup, the furthest the senior national team reached at international competition was the semi-finals at UEFA Euro 1997.

The U-17 national team won the U-17 European Championship in 2010, 2011, 2015, and 2018, as well as becoming champions at the 2018 and 2022 U-17 World Cups, and finalists in the 2014 U-17 World Cup.

The U-19 national team won the UEFA U-19 European Championship in 2004, 2017, 2018, 2022, and 2023.

The U-20 national team were runner-ups at the 2018 U-20 World Cup and then champions at the 2022 U-20 World Cup.

Spain's greatest achievement was winning the 2023 World Cup. Olga Carmona scored the winning goal in the final as captain of the team. Spain became the first women's team to hold three World Cups (senior, under-20, and under-17) simultaneously. Salma Paralluelo played in all three of those tournaments. Spain were also leading goalscorers in the tournament with 18 goals.

Spain became a top 10 team in the FIFA World Rankings for the first time in 2021. Spanish players won all categories of the 2021 UEFA awards, the first time all from one nation. The winners were Alexia Putellas, Sandra Paños, Irene Paredes, and Jennifer Hermoso. In December 2023 after their success in the Nations League, Spain became the number one ranked team in the world.

National competition
The first teams and the first informal women's football competitions in Spain emerged in the 1970s, although they were not officially recognized by the Royal Spanish Football Federation until 1980, with the founding of the National Women's Football Committee. The first official national competition was the Copa de la Reina, established in 1983. The women's national league began to dispute the 1988-89 season.

Primera División is the national competition for female football players in Spain.

Below the Primera División, there is a second tier called Primera Federación, where its teams are divided into seven groups. In 2020 Primera Federación teams became full time professionals.

The lower tiers are administered by the regional federations.