Diego Garcia and Santi Pineda face top seeds in La Nucía draw

Diego Garcia and Santi Pineda were immediately thrown into the hardest section of the La Nucía men’s draw, landing opposite top seeds Facundo Dominguez and Emilio Sánchez as FIP Bronze Comunidad Valenciana III 2026 got underway in La Nucia, Spain. The pair arrived as the second seeds, but the numbers told a tighter race than the bracket order suggested: Dominguez and Sánchez carried 1,747 ranking points, Garcia and Santiago Jose Pineda Cabello had 1,378, and Thomas Leygue and Javier Valdes sat third on 1,165.

That matchup carried more than seed value. Garcia and Pineda had already shown they could win on Spanish soil when they took the FIP Bronze Seville title on 19 April, beating Andrés Fernández Lancha and Mario Ortega 7-5, 6-1. Sánchez adds another layer to the story, having won the FIP Bronze Montesilvano title recently alongside Garcia himself, which means the draw could have produced a symbolic final between former partners if the bracket broke that way. For Garcia and Pineda, another home title would do more than pad a resume: it would suggest the Seville run was part of a repeatable pattern rather than a one-off burst of form.

The rest of the men’s field gave the tournament enough depth to make the week unstable even before the top seeds hit full stride. Javi Valdes and Thomas Leygue were in the mix, as were Nacho Moragues and Ferran Insa, José Solano and Ramiro Pereyra, and Luis Oliver Artigas and Albert Trillas García. With the main draw running from 1 July to 5 July and the event offering €8,500 in prize money, one upset had the potential to reshape the entire weekend very quickly.

The women’s draw carried its own familiar names and proven winners. Aida Martínez and Nati López Díaz headlined that side, and López arrived with two titles already in hand this season, in Prishtina and Cyprus. FIP’s player profile lists the 28-year-old Málaga native, born 22 August 1997, as a left-side player with 794 ranking points and a No. 69 ranking, a profile that fits the form she has shown this spring and summer.

Martínez and López faced a path that also included Brittany Dubins and Anna Cortiles, Vega Cano and Carla Mesa, Ainize Santamaría and Ainara Pozuelo, and Martina Pamigiani and Ana Sánchez. La Nucía sat inside a packed July calendar for the CUPRA FIP Tour, alongside Bordeaux P2, Belfast, Baku II and FIP Silver Alcalá de Guadaíra, underlining how a Bronze event in Spain can still carry weight beyond the local circuit.