Spain won the first Olympic rhythmic group all-around gold medal at Atlanta 1996.
The group event debuted at those Games, held in Georgia, United States, making Spain the inaugural Olympic champion in the discipline. The Spanish team scored 38.933 in the final, narrowly defeating Bulgaria on 38.866. The Russian Federation took bronze with 38.365.
Spain’s six-member gold-medal group consisted of Marta Baldó, Núria Cabanillas, Estela Giménez, Lorena Guréndez, Tania Lamarca and Estíbaliz Martínez. Their final performances used hoops in one routine and a combined apparatus of three balls and two ribbons in the other.
The result was notable because rhythmic gymnastics had traditionally been dominated by Eastern European powers. Spain’s victory over reigning world champion Bulgaria made it one of the sport’s rare early Olympic breakthroughs by a Western European nation. A common mix-up is the individual all-around event at Atlanta, won by Ukraine’s Kateryna Serebrianska; Spain won the group all-around.