The organizers of the Vuelta a Espana have announced the five teams that have received wild cards for the Spanish grand tour. In addition to the 17 WorldTour teams, Caja Rural, Cofidis, Europcar, Colombia and MTN-Qhubeka will be at the start in Andalucia in August.

It was no surprise that Caja Rural earned a spot in their home race. As the only pro contintental team in Spain, the team was destined to be at the start and they will do the race for the fourth year in a row. In the past, they have won a mountain stage with Antonio Piedra and last year Luis Leon Sanchez won the mountains jersey. This year the team will line up with David Arroyo and Sergio Pardilla as their GC captains.

Cofidis has been a major sponsor for the Spanish race for a long time and so the eponymous team has been a perennial participant. With several mountains jerseys and stage wins for David Moncoutie, the team has had lots of success in Spain and last year they managed to win a stage and take a top 10 result with Daniel Navarro who is again expected to lead the team.

Europcar will do the race for the second year in a row but unlike last year, their participation wasn't guaranteed by a WorldTour status. The invitation will be welcome news as the team feared that they would only be able to do one grand tour in 2015.

MTN-Qhubeka will return to the race for the second year in a row after they made their grand tour debut in Spain last year. The invitation means that the African team will be doing two grand tours in 2015 after they secured a wild card for the Tour de France earlier this year.

Finally, the Colombia team will be very relieved to have received this invitation. The team was hugely disappointed to have missed out on selection for the Giro d'Italia and put all their focus on getting an entry to the Spanish race. This will be their debut in the third grand tour and they are likely to be led by Fabio Duarte who was agonizingly close to stage wins in the Giro in both 2013 and 2014.

There was no room for teams like Wanty, Roompot and Unitedhealthcare who had all hoped to do a grand tour in 2015 and so those three teams will have to postpone their first appearance in a three-week race for at least another year.