Carlos Castellanos

Carlos Castellanos Jaquet (1881 – 1903 ) was a Spanish football pioneer who is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the amateur beginnings of Football in the Basque Country, having been the fundamental head behind the foundation of Bilbao Football Club in 1900, the first-ever club in Bilbao, and then serving as the club's first president between 1901 and 1903.

Under his leadership, Bilbao FC merged with their city rivals Athletic Club to form a team that became known as Club Bizcaya, which won the 1902 Copa de la Coronación, the very first national tournament played in Spain.

Early life Castellanos was born in 1881 as the son of a Mexican father, Manuel Herculano de Castellanos Marín (1856–?) and of Manuela Carlota Ignacia de Jacquet, a native of Madrid and the daughter of Carlos Hipólito Jacquet y Saint-Mars, a wealthy Parisian banker of French origin, who had established himself as a merchant in Bilbao in 1860. He had a younger brother Manuel (1883–), while one of his cousins, María Mestayer de Echagüe, known as "Maritxu", became the first gastronomic journalist in the Basque Country and probably in Spain. While studying abroad, Castellanos used to spend the summers in his hometown, and like many other Balbainos, he and his friends, who were also young Bilbao natives from the upper class, began to play football games in the Hippodrome of Lamiako, which at the time was the home of organized football in Biscay. who knew his father Manuel Castellanos since at least 1891 when they were members in the first board of directors of . The entity's board was subsequently elected, with Castellanos being ratified as president. Castellanos was one of the most important figures in what is now regarded as one of the first football rivalries in Spain, one that helped turn football into a mass phenomenon in Bilbao since their duels aroused great expectation.

His next and last appearance as a footballer came on 9 March 1902, which ended in an 0–1 loss to Athletic.

Club Bizcaya Under Castellanos's presidency, the two rivals agreed to join the best players of each club to play two games against the Bordeaux-based side Burdigala. This temporary merge became known as Club Bizcaya, and this team contested the very first national tournament played in Spain, the 1902 Copa de la Coronación, which Bizcaya won after a 2–1 victory over Joan Gamper's FC Barcelona.

Decline and death At the end of 1902, Bilbao FC began to show signs of financial exhaustion due to the non-payment of the appropriate fees by some of its partners who thus compromised the future of the entity. This moment of crisis caused Castellanos to be replaced at the helm of the club by Luis Arana, but a loss of both interest and members in early 1903 worsened the situation, so Juan Astorquia, the then president and team captain of Athletic, approached Arana to convince of how necessary it was to merge the two clubs. Once the negotiations had begun, the sudden death of Castellanos in 1903, at the age of just 22, precipitated the outcome in a few days, concluding the final agreement on 24 March when both presidents signed the merger in which Bilbao FC was dissolved and all of its remaining members and associates were officially absorbed by Athletic. Oddly enough, his football counterpart, Juan Astorquia, also died in his youth, at the age of 29, just two years later, in 1905.