Avanca

Handball arrived in Avanca through a broader academic association, founded on 23 September 1956 under the name Associação Académica de Avanca; bureaucratic rules of the period forced a change to Associação Artística de Avanca before the state recognised it in June 1960. The club still plays under the short name AA Avanca in red and yellow.

Promotion to the top flight came through the Campeonato Nacional da Segunda Divisão, won in 2005, and it put a club from a civil parish of Estarreja alongside Benfica, Sporting CP and FC Porto in Andebol 1. There was no derby waiting for them there. The high point arrived in 2015–16, when an eighth-place regular season took Avanca into the promotion/relegation play-offs, a run the club's president at the time called the best in its senior history. Relegation fights followed in 2021–22 and 2022–23, and the club held its place in the top division through both.

The Pavilhão Comendador Adelino Dias Costa, where Avanca play, holds 500 people.

Xavier Barbosa is the name attached to the club now. He joined the academy at eight years old, worked through to the senior side as a centre back, and earned a call-up to the Portuguese national team. In 2025 he was part of the Portugal under-21 squad that took silver at the World Championship in Poland.