Back to Back: Spain's Unmatched Run

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Spain holds the UEFA European Championship record with four titles, the most of any nation, but the number that actually separates Spain from the rest of the field is smaller and more specific: Spain is the only team ever to have won the tournament in consecutive editions, doing it in 2008 and again in 2012. Every other multiple champion in the competition's history has had its titles spaced apart by at least one tournament somebody else won in between. In a competition held only every four years, with a field that has grown from four finalists at its 1960 founding as the European Nations' Cup to twenty four teams today, winning once is already difficult; winning twice with no gap at all is a record nobody else in the tournament's history has matched.