Team Spain - Profile

Spain has seen most of its success in the pool with swimmers among its top medal-winning athletes.

Teresa Perales is Spain's most notable swimmer, tallying 26 medals over a career that spanned five Games. No Spanish athlete has won more medals than Perales, who won her first minor medals in 2000 as a 24-year-old and managed one gold and three silver at age 40 in 2016. In between, the S5 category athlete won at least one gold medal at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Games.

Fellow swimmer Richard Oribe won 16 total medals, eight of them gold, between 1996 and 2012, almost all in the S4 event.

Between 1980 and 2004, Purificacion Santamarta established herself as one of the most successful athletics competitors in Paralympic history. She opened her medal account with silver over 400m at the Arnhem Games in 1980 [A classification] and won her first gold medals in 1984 over 100m and 400m [B1]. She then added another gold in 1988 [B1], four gold medals in 1992 [B1], three more in 1996 [T10] and a final Paralympic title in 2000 [T11].

Portugal with 26 medals and the Republic of Korea with 20 are the only NPC's to have won more medals in boccia at the Paralympic Games than Spain's 19. Antonio Cid is among Spain's most prominent boccia players. He claimed six medals over four Games between 1992 and 2004.

In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Spain won 9 gold medals, 14 silver and eight bronze medals.