División de Honor Femenina de Balonmano or Liga Guerreras Iberdrola, named after the sponsorship of

Iberdrola Iberdrola, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. It has around 40,000 employees and serves around 30 million customers. Subsidiary, Subsidiaries include ScottishPower (United Kingdom), Ava ...

, is the premier women's professional

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball, Olympic handball or indoor handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of thr ...

league in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

, administered by the Royal Spanish Handball Federation (RFEBM). It was established in 1952, and it is currently contested by twelve teams. The 4 last ranked teams are relegated to División de Honor Oro Femenina, a league newly created for the 2022-2023 season. For a long time, the 2nd level of the Spanish women's handball pyramid was División de Plata (the 3rd level as of now).

History

The championship was founded in 1953, though it was cancelled in 1955 before it was resumed in 1961. Balonmano Sagunto, formerly known as ''Medina'', ''Íber'', and ''Mar Valencia'', is the championship's most successful club with 27 titles, having dominated the competition throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, while SD Itxako has become its major team in recent years, ending the hegemony of

Valencian Valencian can refer to: * Something related to the Valencian Community ( Valencian Country) in Spain * Something related to the city of Valencia * Something related to the province of Valencia in Spain * Something related to the old Kingdom of ...

clubs for the past three decades. The Spanish leading teams have been fairly successful in international competitions since the 1990s. Mar Valencia won the 1997 Champions League and the 2000

Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The competition's official name was originally the European Cup Winners' Cup; it was renamed the UEFA Cup Winne ...

, while CB Amadeo Tortajada and SD Itxako have won the EHF Cup. In 2011, Itxako and CB Mar Alicante reached the final of the Champions League and the Cup Winners' Cup respectively. It changed its official name before 2011–12 season to División de Honor Femenina de Balonmano.RFEBM's general meeting, 08/06/2011
/ref> It was called Liga ABF between 2003 and 2011.

Championship rules

Each team in every division has to play with all the other teams in its division twice, once at home and the other at the opponent's stadium. This means that, like its counterparts in Liga ASOBAL, each ''División de Honor'' season ends after every team plays 26 matches. Like many other leagues in continental Europe, the ''División de Honor'' takes a winter break once each team has played half its schedule. One unusual feature of the league is that the two halves of the season are played in the same order—that is, the order of each team's first-half fixtures is repeated in the second half of the season, with the only difference being the stadiums used. Each victory adds 2 points to the team in the league ranking. Each draw adds 1 point head-to-head. At the end of the league, the winner is: #The team that has the most points in the ranking. #If two or more teams are level on points, the winner is the team that has the best results #If there is no winner after applying the second rule, then the team with the best overall goal difference wins.

List of champions

* 1953 Sección Femenina (Madrid) * 1954 Sección Femenina (Madrid) * 1955 Sección Femenina (Madrid) * 1961 Sección Femenina (Barcelona) * 1962 SH A Coruña * 1963 Medina Barcelona * 1964 Picadero * 1965 Picadero * 1966 Picadero * 1967 Picadero * 1968 Medina Valencia * 1969 Medina Valencia * 1970 Picadero * 1971

Atlético Madrid Club Atlético de Madrid, S.A.D. (; meaning "Athletic Club of Madrid"), commonly referred to as Atlético Madrid or simply Atlético, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid that plays in La Liga. The club play their home game ...

* 1972

* 1973 Medina Guipúzcoa * 1974 Medina Valencia * 1975 Medina Guipúzcoa * 1976

* 1977

* 1978

* 1979 Medina-Íber Valencia * 1980 Íber Valencia * 1981 Íber Valencia * 1982 Íber Valencia * 1983 Íber Valencia * 1984 Íber Valencia * 1985 Íber Valencia * 1986 Íber Valencia *

1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...

Íber Valencia * 1988 Íber Valencia * 1989 Íber Valencia * 1990 Íber Valencia * 1991 Íber Valencia * 1992 Íber Valencia * 1993 Mar Valencia * 1994 Mar Valencia * 1995 Mar Valencia * 1996 Mar Valencia * 1997 Mar Valencia * 1998 Mar Valencia * 1999

Elda Elda (; , ) is a city and municipality located in the province of Alicante, Spain. , it has a total population of 55,618 inhabitants, ranking as the 7th most populous city in the province. Elda joins together with the town of Petrer to form a ...

* 2000 Mar Valencia * 2001 Mar Valencia * 2002 Mar Valencia * 2003

* 2004

* 2005 Mar Valencia * 2006 Amadeo Tortajada *

2007 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

Amadeo Tortajada * 2008

2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...

Itxako *

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

Itxako *

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

Itxako *

2012 2012 was designated as: *International Year of Cooperatives *International Year of Sustainable Energy for All Events January *January 4 – The Cicada 3301 internet hunt begins. * January 12 – Peaceful protests begin in the R ...

Itxako *

2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...

Bera Bera *

2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...

Bera Bera *

2015 2015 was designated by the United Nations as: * International Year of Light * International Year of Soil __TOC__ Events January * January 1 – Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes ...

Bera Bera *

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

Bera Bera *

2017 2017 was designated as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations General Assembly. Events January * January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...

Mecalia Atlético. Guardés *

2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

Bera Bera *

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

Rocasa Gran Canaria * 2020 Bera Bera * 2021 Bera Bera * 2022 Bera Bera * 2023 Costa del Sol Málaga * 2024 Bera Bera * 2025 Bera Bera

Performance by club

References

External links

Real Federación Española de Balonmano
{{DEFAULTSORT:Division de Honor

Women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...

Hand A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the Koala#Characteristics, koala (which has two thumb#O ...

Women's handball in Spain Professional sports leagues in Spain

History

Championship rules

List of champions

Performance by club

See also

References

External links