There are players who score tries, who dazzle with speed and leave a stadium gasping.

And then there are players like Alba Capell — players who do not just win games, but bend the story of a nation’s rugby with their bare hands.

She grew up in the iconic shirt of FC Barcelona, not in the grand round ball light of the Camp Nou, but on muddy fields of the oval Catalonia club where rugby is played in the raw.

As a young player she discovered a simple truth: if someone pushes you down, you get back up. And then you push back harder. It is a lesson she has carried from those first tackles into every shirt she has worn since.

When she first pulled on the red jersey of Spain against South Africa in 2022, there was a fearlessness in her stance, a quiet defiance in her eyes. She was not there to be a debutant. She was there to stay.

Then came heartbreak. The narrow defeat to Ireland in 2023 that shut Spain out of the World Cup and it broke her in a way she admits openly.

Alba cried, she hurt, but she promised herself that she would never feel that helpless again. Out of those wounds came something stronger.

And so, in Dubai at WXV 3 in 2024, with the match locked in a stalemate against Fiji, it was Capell who crashed through over the line to score the only try which proved to be decisive.

It was the moment Spain’s future opened up in front of them. When the whistle blew, she was named Player of the Match, but the award was only a shadow of what had really happened she had helped to redeem a nation’s hope.

It is this duality that defines her: steel and vulnerability, ferocity and tenderness, a warrior who admits the weight of defeat but uses it as a motivation.

Now with Sale Sharks in England’s Premier 15s, she continues to sharpen her skills against some of the best in the world, a young forward learning to thrive in the most unforgiving league. She is not the player you necessarily notice first. She is the one you notice last covered in mud, body bruised and lungs burning — still carrying, still tackling, still refusing to let up.

For Spain, she is more than a flanker. She is a symbol. A reminder that rugby here is not built on privilege or endless depth of talent, but on resilience — the kind that grows when a young girl decides that no defeat will ever define her.

And as the 2025 Rugby World Cup enters its second week, Alba Capell stands at the threshold not as a prodigy anymore, but as a promise kept. A promise to herself. A promise to Spain.

Because when she plays, it is not just rugby. It is poetry written in bruises, a rhythm of collisions, a heartbeat that refuses to quiet.

Vamos Alba.