El Salvador

El Salvador won the 2002–03 league without losing a match. That season sits inside a run that produced nine División de Honor titles. In 1997–98 El Salvador had been relegated in 1995–96 and promoted a year later, and they became the first newly promoted side to win the championship straight away.

The Copa del Rey followed a similar pattern of accumulation: eight wins, three of them in consecutive years from 2005 to 2007, when the club also took the league in 2007 and the Supercopa de España. In 2003–04 they went into Europe for the first time, in the Challenge Cup. They reached the second round and lost to Rovigo of Italy.

Recruitment was international. Uale Mai, the Samoan named IRB International Sevens Player of the Year in 2006, played here, as did the New Zealanders Joe McDonnell and Gillies Kaka. The Englishman Sam Katz finished as the División de Honor's top scorer in both 2014/15 and 2015/16. The academy supplies the other side of the squad: Raúl Turrión came through it and won 3 caps for Spain.

Across the city, VRAC, formed in 1986, is the opponent in the Derbi vallisoletano, and the two clubs share the Pepe Rojo ground, which holds around 5,000. The women's team won the Liga Iberdrola in 2024–25, the same season the men took their ninth league title.

In 1960 Georges Bernés, a French priest and teacher, brought rugby to the Colegio El Salvador in Valladolid, and the black-and-white hoops were worn from that first year. The Chamizos take their name from a shrub whose pattern resembles them, and their panda mascot, Chamito, comes from the same colours.