This is when I say "fuck you Nintendo" (please read before deleting xD).
Spain has been awfully ignored in this world championship. As a webmaster of a Spanish Pokemon website, I've been denouncing this lack of recognition to Spanish players.
Not only was Spain excluded from the countries participating in the tournament, we were given a "placebo": Nintendo Iberica organized a national tournament in Spain. The winner would be able to participate in the "European finals" in Paris. As there were only 90 participants in Paris, this means he only won a free trip to Paris and a 3-day hotel stay (and Platinum + DSi).
We had 4 preliminar rounds in the Spanish tournament (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, A Coruña). I went to Madrid to cover the event: 286 junior applicants, 203 senior applicants. Just in Madrid. Barcelona was the same. There were more applicants in Madrid and Barcelona alone than in UK, Germany and France altogether (132 + 117 + 90). Two best players of each qualifier would go to the finals in Madrid, which I also covered. The Spanish Champ was a 44-year-old man called Miguel (a nice guy for sure, he was there to play for his kid, who fell ill when the qualifier was done).
They also tweaked the rules: Teams of 3 Pokemon without telling in advance (ie. all competitive teams were fucked, as all competitive players thought it would be for teams of 4 Pokemon as in US and UK). Hack controls were much more intense: they could ban you out of the tournament if you had anything suspicious on your whole save, leading most participants to begin a new game just in case (they would ban you for hacks obtained via GTS). The junior champ of Madrid was banned for using a Dragonite TRU lv50 (US event) and a masterballed Typhlosion (which can be legally obtained).
Btw, the tournament was announced with 8 days advanced notification. So people had only 8 days to prepare their teams.
Flash and Eduard also participated in the Spanish tournament. Flash was eliminated in the Madrid qualifier because the organizers were authentic noobs and didn't even know the rules. They didn't allow him to use Explosion, when this move is not banned (you lose if used to finish the battle). Eduard made it to the Spanish finals, but had no luck on his first battle.
They both made it to the French semifinals. But they could not do this on the Spanish tournament, but on the French (so-called "European"). As for the junior Champ, Lucas, he won the French Tournament. So, basically, 3 Spanish players made it to the semi-finals, one of them winning the junior tournament.
This also went against French players, who would receive more competitive players from the rest of Europe, and have their "representation" in the worlds reduced.
Spanish players have demonstrated they attended this tournament with much more enthusiasm than other Europeans. We didn't have a chance to directly participate on the Worlds, even though there were more than 500 applicants for each category.
So let me say "thank you The Pokémon Company" for having excluded Spain of the world championship. Because its the fault of TPC, not of Nintendo Ibérica, that we were excluded. I wish Lucas the best luck on the worlds. He deserves it, having won 3 tournaments to go there (qualifier, Spain, France).