Football pyramid

How do the Spanish football divisions work?

Segunda B, Tercera Federación, and Preferente could be confusing terms, considering that their meaning has changed over time. Just like in every part of the world, football in Spain develops fast and much. In this blogpost, the past and present of the Spanish football pyramid will be explained.

The current system

Spanish football consists of three parts. There are two professional tiers, three semi-professional tiers, and more amateur tiers:

• (1) Primera División, also called Primera (pro)
• (2) Segunda División, also called Segunda (pro)

These top two tiers comprise La Liga and are the only professional competitions in Spain. La Liga has become a colloquial synonym for the Primera División, but technically only refers to the organizing body of the Spanish professional competitions.

• (3) Primera Federación (semi-pro)
• (4) Segunda Federación, also called Segunda B (semi-pro)
• (5) Tercera Federación, also called Tercera (semi-pro)

These three semi-professional leagues are organized by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and, thus, have to collaborate with La Liga to make Spanish football work.

The sixth tier and below are organized by Spanish regional football federations. This means that every regional league works differently and has a different number of participants. Moreover, big regions have enough teams to continue until the tenth tier, while smaller regions tend to have only a sixth tier.

The structure of Spanish football (in Spanish). © Wikipedia.

Primera División

The Primera is the highest and most prestigious Spanish league. It consists of 20 of Spain’s best clubs and allows seven of them to participate in European competitions: four in the Champions League, two in the Europa League, and one in the Conference League. The Primera is known as a competition with a big difference between the ‘big’ and ‘small’ teams, and for having some of the world’s best footballers. Yearly, the three lowest-ranked teams go drop down.

The classification of the first season of the Primera División: 1929, a season in which only 10 teams participated. These teams are the founders of the Primera División. Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Athletic Club are the only clubs to have never been relegated to the Segunda División. On the contrary, Europa, Arenas, and Real Unión have fallen into the depths of Spanish football and are the only three ‘founding fathers’ to be far away from professional football. Finally, it’s interesting to see how the logos of these clubs looked like back in the day. © bdfutbol.com

Segunda División

The Segunda is Spain’s largest league, housing 22 clubs. The Segunda is the country’s lowest professional league and is, therefore, often the ultimate goal for modest teams, considering that the Primera División is deemed practically impossible. The Segunda is known for being a very balanced competition full of historic sides. The two highest-ranked teams go up directly, while the remaining top six play a knock-out tournament to decide who wins the third promotion. The four lowest-ranked teams get relegated.

Darwin Núñez (here at Almería) is an example of a player who has become a superstar after breaking through in the Segunda División, a competition that tends to be full of promising talents. More examples are Pedri (Las Palmas), Marc Cucurella and David Silva (Eibar), Samuel Eto’o (Leganés), David Villa (Sporting), and Antoine Griezmann (Real Sociedad) © Juan Sánchez.

Primera Federación

Now it gets interesting – this blog is about Spanish modest football, of course. The Primera Federación is the third tier and was previously known as the Primera RFEF. The competition consists of 40 teams geographically divided into two groups. The Primera Federación is a prestigious competition in the lower-league life of Spanish football and is the highest league reachable before entering professional football. The champions of both groups achieve direct promotion, while the remaining top five in both groups participate in a knock-out tournament to determine which two teams join the champions to the second tier. In short, the Segunda División and the Primera Federación yearly exchange four teams. The bottom five teams of both groups go down.

Deportivo de la Coruña is one of the founding clubs of the Primera Federación in 2021 and is considered the biggest team in the category. In 2023, Deportivo had more than 26,000 season ticket holders, which makes them the 10th most-supported team in Spain. © Jesús Sancho.

Segunda Federación

The Segunda Federación – shortly known as the Segunda RFEF – is the fourth tier, consisting of 90 teams divided into five groups. The Segunda Federación is seen as the bridge between the third tier and the fifth tier and, due to the higher number of teams, is seen as a less exclusive league than the Primera Federación. Again, the champions of all groups achieve direct promotion, while the remaining top five in all groups participate in a knock-out tournament to determine which five teams join the champions to the second tier. In short, the Primera Federación and Segunda Federación annually exchange 10 teams. The bottom five teams of every group go down, while the four worst teams in 13th place participate in a play-off to decide which two stay up and which two go down. This brings the total amount of yearly relegations to 27. This makes the Segunda Federación a very challenging competition. In each group of 18 teams, the team in 1st place achieves promotion, the teams in 2nd to 5th place partake in the play-offs for promotion, the team in 13th place has a very high chance of having to play the play-off to stay up, and the teams in 14th to 18th place get relegated. To sum it all up, a minority of teams has nothing happening at the end of the season.

Yearly, the RFEF has to distribute 90 teams in 5 groups, which is always a challenge. This was the distribution of the first season, 2021-22. © RFEF.

Tercera federación

The Tercera Federación is the lowest semi-professional tier in Spain and the lowest to be organized by the national football federation. It consists of 18 groups, each having 16 participants. Every autonomous community has one group, except for Andalusia, which is divided into west and east due to its big size. The teams from Ceuta compete in the Western Andalusian group, and the teams from Melilla do so in the Eastern Andalusian one. In every group, the champion achieves promotion, while the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th-placed teams play a regional knock-out tournament to decide which team can participate in the interregional play-offs. In these nationwide play-offs, 18 teams participate and only nine teams can achieve promotion. The bottom three teams of every group get relegated to the regional amateur tiers, as explained briefly before.

An overview of all promotions and relegations in Spanish football. © Modest Spanish Football.

Reserve teams

An interesting case goes for the reserve teams of clubs, which participate in the regular leagues. However, different teams from the same club cannot coincide in any competition. For example, in 2023-24, Villarreal B competes in the Segunda División but is not eligible for promotion. Moreover, if Villarreal gets relegated from the Primera División to the Segunda División, Villarreal B will be placed in the Primera Federación, regardless of the reserve team’s classification. The same goes for B and C teams of the same club. To illustrate, Las Palmas B got relegated from the fourth to the fifth tier in 2022, while Las Palmas C achieved promotion from the fifth tier to the fourth tier. However, the third team was not allowed to switch places with the second team and was, therefore, put back into the sixth tier despite their right to promotion. Finally, reserve teams cannot participate in any cup competitions.

A starting XI of CD Condal in the 1950s. Condal was the reserve team of FC Barcelona, but would have been able to achieve promotion if it weren’t affiliated to Barcelona. The solution? Breaking all (official) ties with the Catalan club. This way, Condal reached the Primera División, even though it was unofficially ‘Barcelona B’. Condal is the only case of a reserve team reaching the top tier. © Panenka.

Copa del Rey

The most prestigious competition is the Copa del Rey, created in 1902 to celebrate the crowning of Alfonso XIII. Until the creation of the Primera División in 1929, the Copa del Rey was the highest national competition, and its winner was seen as the national champion. Currently, the King’s Cup has become a secondary competition. Still, the knock-out tournament is the only way for smaller clubs to compete against teams from the Primera División. Yearly, some big teams are beaten by teams from the Primera Federación, Segunda Federación, or Tercera Federación, making it a very attractive competition to watch.

Juanan Casanova celebrates his goal for Alcoyano against Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey in 2021. The Valencians would go on to knock out Real Madrid, becoming the most famous example of David beating Goliath in the 2020s. © Getty Images.

Copa Federación

The Copa Federación is, just like the ‘Federación’ leagues, a lower equivalent to an existing competition, which, in this case, is the Copa del Rey. The Copa Federación is a knock-out tournament for Spain’s best teams that have not qualified for the main cup. This includes teams from the third, fourth, and fifth tier. The competition’s first phase involves a knock-out tournament within every region, and its second phase is a tournament between the winners of the first phase. Due to the absence of professional clubs, the Copa Federación is lesser known but still very important for semi-professional teams.

The players of CD Puertollano, the record champion of the Copa Federación, celebrate their third and last win in 2011. Currently, the club is known as Calvo Sotelo. © Mundo Deportivo.

The past

The Primera and Segunda División were created in 1929, and some years later, the first long-term project for the third tier was launched: the Tercera División, which translates to ‘Third Division’. This division was – more or less – used for many decades, sometimes consisting of a couple of groups and sometimes of up to 18 groups.

In 1977, a big change occurred: the introduction of the Segunda División B. Instead of renaming the third and fourth tier, the RFEF decided to maintain the name of the Tercera División, after which ‘Segunda B’ was chosen as the name of the new third tier. To avoid confusion with the second tier, the Segunda División was often called ‘Segunda A’ during the existence of the Segunda B. The Segunda B comprised four groups of 20 teams each.

In 2021, it was announced that the Segunda B would disappear and that two new leagues were introduced: the Primera Federación and the Segunda Federación. This led the Tercera División to be called ‘Tercera Federación’. Practically, only one new league was created: the Primera Federación, an unprecedented division. The Segunda Federación, on the other hand, is very similar to the old Segunda B: it is the tier above the Tercera, it consists of a handful of groups, each group has approximately the same number of participants, and there are play-offs to decide who achieves promotion. The main difference with the old Segunda B is that the strongest sides of the latter competition now compete in the Primera Federación, which means that the Segunda Federación has a lower level than the Segunda B. Still, many people and organizations – including Modest Spanish Football – regard the Segunda Federación as a continuation of the Segunda División B.

Sources

• https://rfef.es/es
• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_de_ligas_de_f%C3%BAtbol_de_Espa%C3%B1a
• https://www.bdfutbol.com/en/t/t1928-29.html
• Borchers, L. (2021). GOLAZO. Self-published.