BARCELONA — Spain is, on most counts, a peripheral rugby union nation. It ranks 23rd in the world, 11th in Europe and has played in the World Cup only once, back in 1999.

Yet this weekend it will briefly be the center of the European game as host of two of the four quarterfinal matches in the Heineken Cup, rugby’s equivalent of soccer’s Champions League.

Biarritz entertains Toulouse at San Sebastian in a rematch Sunday of the final last year, the day after Perpignan plays Toulon at the Barcelona Olympic Stadium — the main venue for the 1992 Summer Games. It is an occasion that has thrilled Perpignan’s players.

“This has all the ingredients for being a real firecracker of a game,” said Perpignan captain Perry Freshwater, who pointed out that his club had long wanted to play a big match to Barcelona “And now there is real excitement that it is going to happen. Everyone has been talking about this game for weeks.”

Perpignan is crossing the Spanish frontier for much the same reasons as Biarritz. Neither has a stadium with the 15,000 capacity demanded of quarterfinal venues, each has an identity that crosses the border — Biarritz is Basque, Perpignan is Catalan — and both see that heritage as a possible means of finding fresh fans and funds.

A guaranteed sellout of the 55,000-seat Olympic Stadium suggests Perpignan might do just that. While the club already has two recognized supporter groups in Barcelona, the club’s president, Paul Goze, told the Perpignan daily newspaper L’Independent that selling 15,000 tickets in Spain was “very pleasing, and, given that it was the first time of asking, the subject of some astonishment. And we could have sold more.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/sp...t-RUGBY09.html