Spain's top flight began with ten clubs in 1929
La Liga—Spain's Primera División—is a twenty-club, thirty-eight-match double round-robin run by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional. José María Acha floated a national league in 1928; the federation launched ten founding sides a year later. Real Madrid and Barcelona still tower over the title list.
Between August and May every club meets every other twice, home and away, earning three points for a win and one for a draw. The bottom three go down to the Segunda División, whose top two come up automatically, with a play-off among the third- to sixth-placed sides deciding one more promotion. Level clubs are split first by head-to-head goal difference, with no away-goals rule, and in the last resort by Fair Play scales, where a suspended coach costs five points, or even a deciding match at a neutral ground. The top four enter the Champions League, the fifth-placed side and the Copa del Rey winners go to the Europa League, and the next side down gets a Conference League play-off.
Arenas de Getxo official José María Acha floated the idea of a national league in April 1928, and after long argument the federation picked ten clubs for 1929. Six were former cup winners: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, Real Unión, Real Sociedad and Arenas itself; Atlético Madrid, Espanyol and Europa got in as cup runners-up, and Racing de Santander won a knockout tournament. Only Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic have never been relegated. Barcelona won the first title, but Fred Pentland's Athletic took four of the next seven and once beat Barcelona 12–1, while Betis Balompié won their lone championship in 1935 before the Civil War halted play.
Atlético Aviación entered the first post-war season only because Real Oviedo's ground had been damaged, then won the title in 1940 and 1941. Valencia's intact young squad won three titles in the 1940s, Sevilla claimed their only one in 1946, and Josep Samitier coached Barcelona to three. In 1952 Ferdinand Daučík's Barcelona, featuring László Kubala, won five trophies and became the Team of the Five Cups. Real Madrid got round the three-foreigner limit by naturalising Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás and won four titles that decade, matching Barcelona.
Sixty-three clubs have played in the division and nine have been champions, Real Madrid with 36 titles and Barcelona with 29. Spanish sides have won 20 Champions Leagues, more than any other country's, and players from the league have collected 24 Ballon d'Or awards. Crowds averaged 26,933 in 2018–19, third among football leagues behind England and Germany, and the league ranks seventh in revenue among all professional sports leagues.
Source: La Liga
