Basque pelota In Valencia, Valencian pilota is considered the national sport; it is also played in Belgium, North of Italy, Mexico, and Argentina. Since its creation, the International Federation of Basque Pelota has standardised the different varieties into four modalities and fourteen disciplines, with fixed ball weights, rules and court sizes. The four modalities— wall, wall, wall and "trinquete"—admit fourteen disciplines, depending the use of bare hand, leather ball, rubber ball, "paleta" (pelota paleta), racket (frontennis) and "xare". Two of the fourteen disciplines are played by both men and women (frontenis and rubber pelota in trinquete); the other twelve are played only
Sport in Spain 2011 EuroBasket, Fernando Alonso's back-to-back (2005 and 2006 Formula One championships), the football team bringing home Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 trophies and Óscar Pereiro, Alberto Contador and Carlos Sastre's 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 triumphs in Tour de France more recently, several papers have looked beyond Sastre's win to claim that Spain is enjoying something of a sporting "Golden Age"-similar to the Spanish 17th century achievements in painting and literature. Football is the most popular sport in Spain. La Liga or "Primera División" (The Spanish League) is considered to be one of the world's best