Ten points down with just 20 minutes to play, Ireland co-captain Sam Monaghan says the team never lost belief that they could get the job done.
Spain had led since the 10th minute in Dubai and, with a quarter of the game to go, Ireland had only a solitary Dannah O'Brien score on the board and were staring at what would have been another set-back loss.
Grace Moore’s converted try got them to within three points and even though a draw would have been enough to top the WXV3 table, the decision was made to turn down an easy penalty kick and go for the corner.
Moments later Ireland had their score with hooker Neve Jones grabbing her eighth try in 21 games for her country and with that a 15-13 lead.
On the decision to decline the shot at goal, Monaghan said: "It’s something we’ve practised a lot.
"Going direct is dangerous, but that was a point in the game where we were building momentum, when you could see they were on their knees.
"Although this was a harder challenge this week, I think the resilience we showed and the decisions we made in the second half under pressure showed how much we’re building as a squad, and the confidence we can play with now."
So Ireland begin life under Scott Bemand (below) with three wins from three, Saturday’s success coming on the back of mis-matches against Kazakhstan and Colombia.
While the result could have gone either way, Monaghan was eager to point out the importance of getting over the line and being able to take home some silverware after what has been a harrowing couple of years for the team.
"100% (it was important)," said the Gloucester-Hartpury lock.
"It was our goal coming into this. I’m just extremely proud of the girls.
"It’s not easy going into a dressing room 10 points down at half-time with a yellow card [for co-captain Edel McMahon in the third minute].
"It just shows the character that we have in this group, that we can face a challenge and hit it head on.
"I think we stuck to our game plan, exactly as we said, and played where we wanted to play. Spain’s defence was probably the biggest defence we’ve come up against.
"We spoke about it in the second half, we just needed to tighten up and deepen up a bit, so to get that collision [dominance] and build momentum. I think we did that very well.
"At half-time I basically said to the team that I 100% wholeheartedly believed we were going to win that match.
"I was proud of every single player, not only those that was on the pitch today but the ones back in Ireland as well that got us to this point.
"Girls at home, injured girls, girls who didn’t get selected, and everyone here, the staff. Just the effort that everyone has put in has been absolutely amazing.
"It’s been the work that’s been put in since the end of August, all the way to here. We’ve been building confidence week on week, and every week we’ve said it, we just want to be a bit better than last week."
While Ireland were crowned WXV3 champions, it does not come with automatic qualification to the second tier.
Instead the team make up the three division from from regional qualifiers, which in Ireland's case is the Six Nations.
The top three from that competition qualify for WXV1, fourth and fifth go into WXV2 and the team that finishes bottom goes into a play-off against the Rugby Europe winners to see which team plays in the second and third tier.
Ireland's Six Nations campaign starts away to France on 23 March.
