División de Honor Femenina de Balonmano or Liga Guerreras Iberdrola, named after the sponsorship of Iberdrola, is the premier women's professional handball league in Spain, 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).
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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 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, 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. 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.