Catalan football championship

In 1901, Hispania AC became the first Catalan champions after winning the inaugural Copa Macaya, the first football championship played on the Iberian Peninsula.[1] The following season, 1901–02, saw FC Barcelona win the title, the club's very first piece of silverware.[2] During the 1902–03 season, two rival competitions were organized with RCD Espanyol winning the Copa Macaya after beating Hispania 3–1 in a title-deciding play-off (as they had finished level on points), while FC Barcelona won the Copa Barcelona. After 1903 the championship was organized by the Football Associació de Catalunya and it became known as the Campionat de Catalunya, and they recognized the Macaya Cup as the first edition of the Campionat de Catalunya. The stand-out players of this Copa Macaya period were Joan Gamper, who was proclaimed the top scorer of the first two tournaments with 31 and 19 goals respectively, and Gustavo Green, who is considered to have been the first great star of Catalan football, winning all the three editions of the Copa Macaya with three different clubs (Hispania, Barça and Español).[3] The winners of the Campionat de Catalunya also began to represent Catalonia in the Copa del Rey. By 1917 the league had turned professional and included a second division.

The first edition of the Campionat de Catalunya in 1903–04 was won by Club Espanyol (now RCD Espanyol), which at the time had Gustavo Green, and also with Ángel Ponz and José Maria Soler. The first dynasty of the Catalan championship came shortly after, when X Sporting Club won it three times in a row between 1906 and 1908. This historic X side had great national figures of that time such as Pedro Gibert, Emilio Sampere, the Massana brothers (Santiago and Alfredo), José Irízar and José Berdié, with the latter four going on to play for Barcelona.[4] On the other hand, FC Internacional achieved three successive runner-up finishes between 1904 and 1906, and interestingly, they lost the title to a different opponent each time: Club Español, FC Barcelona and X Sporting Club respectively. This FCI team had the likes of Paco Bru, Charles Wallace and Enrique Peris, all of which went on to join Barcelona. Naturally, all of these great players joining Barcelona meant a big leap in quality for the club, and as a result, at the turn of the first decade, Barcelona was enjoying its first great team. As well as the aforementioned players, Barça also had the likes of Amechazurra, Romà Forns, Pepe Rodríguez and Carles Comamala, and this team managed to repeat X's feat of winning three championships in a row, doing it so between 1909 and 1911. Their streak came to an end when RCD Espanyol won their second championship in 1911–12, largely thanks to the goalscoring feats of their foreign players such as Frank Allack, captain Victor Gibson and the Wallace brothers, Charles and Percy.[5]

In the 1910s, FC Espanya, propelled by their infamous back line of Hermenegild Casellas and Eduardo Reguera, began to disrupt the monopoly of Barcelona and RCD Espanyol, winning the championship three times in 1912–13, 1913–14 and 1916–17. However, RCD Espanyol managed to form an even better defense whose solo architect was Ricardo Zamora, thus claiming the title in 1914–15 and 1917–18, winning the former after beating Barça 4–0 in the title-deciding play-off, with braces from Juan López and José Maria Tormo. The Catalan Championship then witnessed their third dynasty, which was with no doubt the greatest. At the turn of the second decade, Barça was enjoying its second golden age, which was the legendary team coached by Jack Greenwell, that also included Paulino Alcántara, Sagibarba, Félix Sesúmaga, Ricardo Zamora and Josep Samitier, and this side won 9 out of 10 titles between 1919 and 1928. The only team that managed to break their supremacy was CE Europa in the 1922–23 season, largely thanks to Estebán Pelaó, Manuel Cros and Antonio Alcázar, with the latter netting the only goal of the title-deciding play-off (they had finished tied on points) that gave CE Europa the trophy.[6]

In 1928 three Catalan clubs: FC Barcelona, RCD Espanyol and CE Europa, became founding members of La Liga and the Campionat de Catalunya gradually began to decline in importance during the Spanish Civil War. In the 1930s, the championship was won by either Barcelona or Espanyol, except in 1933-34 when CE Sabadell FC, surprised everyone by winning it against all odds. The last competition was held on 1939-40, and the Campionat de Catalunya ended in the same way it began, with an RCD Espanyol triumph.