Manuel Castellanos (footballer)

Castellanos was born in 1883 in the , 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 Saint-Mars, a wealthy banker of French origin, 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. ==Personal life==

Castellanos was married twice, having at least three children with his first wife, José Maria (1909), Amelia Castellanos Ledo (1912), and Manuel (1914–1936). He then married for the second time with Laura Peña Arribas, 16 years his junior, and the couple had nine children, Carlos, Luis, Francisco, Rafael, Javier, Alfonso, Manuel (1936–?), Guillermo, and Laura Castellanos Peña, all of whom were born in the second third of the 20th century. ==Presidency of Athletic Bilbao==

In 1929, Castellanos was elected as the 12th president of Athletic Bilbao, a position that he held for four years until 1933. 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. ==References==