Manuel Castellanos

Manuel Ángel Juan Bautista de Castellanos Jacquet was a Spanish engineer and footballer and the 12th president of Athletic Bilbao between 1929 and 1933. He still is the most successful president in the history of the club; under the guidance of Fred Pentland, Athletic won two La Liga titles and four Copa del Reys in his four years in office. who established himself as a merchant in Bilbao in 1860 and who became the city's consul of France. He had an older brother Carlos (1881–1903), who became the first president of Bilbao FC, while one of his cousins, María Mestayer de Echagüe (1877–1949), known as "Maritxu", became the first gastronomic journalist in the Basque Country and probably in Spain. According with Manuel, his father, through a friend of his from a London Credit Bank, received some football boots that were then recreated by a local shoemaker named Germán Gómez: The first "Made in Spain" boots.

Football career In the late 1890s, Castellanos became a member of an informal group led by his brother Carlos, the so-called Bilbao Football Club, the first entity to play football in Bilbao since the disappearance of Club Atleta.

At the end of 1901, the two most important clubs in the city were Bilbao FC and Athletic Club, thus developing a rivalry between them, Castellanos was thus part 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. A few months later, on 24 March 1903, Bilbao FC agreed at the General Meeting to dissolve the club, and its remaining members and associates were officially absorbed by their rival. Thanks in part to the great management of Fred Pentland, Castellanos became the most successful president in the history of the club, with two La Liga titles and four Copa del Reys in his four years in office.

The Castellanos surname continued to be linked to Athletic in the second generation through José María Castellanos, known as "Chitín" in the family, son of the president and a regular defender for Mr. Pentland until he hung up his shirt in 1934. He went on to become a Basque-Navarrese tennis champion for several years before dying of cancer. Another son, Manuel, was less fortunate; enlisted in the Spanish Civil War on the day nationalist troops entered Getxo, he perished on the front just 24 hours later, so his father named his next child after him.