Last Saturday night saw the inevitable happen, Barcelona winning their seventeenth league title since 1929 and putting paid to six years in the relative wilderness - or eleven years, if you prefer to ignore the two consecutive titles of the Van Gaal years and return more nostalgically to the Dream Team era, whose final title was won in 1994.
There was a paranoia that reigned in Barcelona during the final years of the 20th century, despite the two titles - a paranoia unworthy of one of the world's great clubs.
With a president, Joan Gaspart, who would have been the perfect subject for a study of how power corrupts, or sends you over the brink, depending on your perspective on things.
But you get the leader you deserve, as they say, and Barcelona's massive fan base voted Gaspart in, after the Nuñez years. Realising their mistake, they also voted in Joan Laporta eight purgative years later, a decision that would seem to have finally paid off.
Not that Barça's title is free of irony. There are various layers of it in fact. We might as well start with the man whose equalising goal at Levante finally clinched the title, two hours after Sevilla's bullish striker, Julio Baptista, had headed his side level against Real Madrid and virtually sealed the season's fate.
Samuel Eto'o, playing for Mallorca this time last year, but still technically belonging to Real Madrid, nodded in his 24th of a triumphal season with his new club and raced off towards the 10,000 or so Barça fans who had made the short trip to Valencia.
Kissing the club badge as oft he has done this season, one could not help but reflect on the gossamer-thin destiny that finally saw him move to the Camp Nou. Time and time again last season, Eto'o let it be known that he wanted to return to the Bernabéu, whose turf he had last trod in a white shirt in the year 2000.
He even mouthed a petition to be re-signed to the Madrid faithful after he'd virtually put paid to their title hopes last year with a wonderful solo goal. But Valdano wasn't sure, and neither was Camacho, once the old hero had agreed to return as manager.
Neither of them was sure that Eto'o's ego would fit into the complex galactic mix that was already reigning at the Bernabéu - where Ronaldo's presence up front and the imminent arrival of the interesting Michael Owen seemed to indicate that the Cameroon's presence would constitute an unnecessary luxury. They were probably right, but it seems almost surreal now that they let him go so easily.
He has hammered the nails into the lid of his old club's coffin on various occasions this season, and Madrid will just be happy for the season to end so that they can forget about his face for a couple of blissful months. It's been Eto'o's season really. He's been the main character in the script, and he knew he'd been handed the part at the very beginning.
Larsson, good player though he is, was always going to play second fiddle, whether he'd been injured or not. Saviola, Kluivert and Overmars were all offloaded, in the confident knowledge that Sam would do the business. And he certainly has.
So has Ronaldinho, to say the least. Fitful last season, until its second half when he really began to show what he was made of, this season he has been more consistently brilliant, aided and abetted, as he has been, by a more accomplished midfield cast.
But it remains a curious fact that he was only really signed as an afterthought, after David Beckham had refused to even speak to Laporta's representatives after the young lawyer won the club elections, partly on the basis that he had supposedly secured the Englishman's signature in a deal that echoed Pérez' famous capture of Figo.
No-one has ever dug up the truth about this affair, but it seems almost impossible to cast one's mind back now to that summer, when Real Madrid were the sexiest act on Earth, Barcelona were the castrated bull and Valencia were confirmed as the true rivals to the Bernabéu's dominance.
Recognising this, Valdano entered into a final and desperate attempt to lure Roberto Ayala away from the Mestalla, but Rafa Benitez was having none of it. Beckham kept it fairly discreet on the topic of Barcelona, but did let it slip on one occasion that he had been convinced by Madrid's approach because he knew that it would give him the chance 'to win more trophies'.
Well - he managed the Spanish Super Cup within a couple of months of arriving, but since then it's been a case of zilch. He's done well, and from time to time has shown qualities that many of his team-mates have been lacking, but one wonders what he thinks in private, especially this season as he has watched 'Art' Deco, Ronaldinho, Giuly, Xavi and company run riot through the midfields of Spain.
No regrets? Possibly not. But it's interesting how things have turned out, especially given the fact that the first thing that Alex Ferguson tried to do with the income his transfer generated was to buy Ronaldinho.
According to many, he almost got him too, and that the only reason the Brazilian failed to show at Old Trafford for a chat with his employers-to-be was that his agent misunderstood a phrase as he was talking on the phone to the Old Trafford go-between. The 'phrase', of course, referred to a sum of money - but there you go - the cock-up theory of history. Manchester United are thus in decline, and Barcelona have risen from their own ashes like a phoenix on amphetamines.
They've been wonderful and lucky in equal measure this season, although great sides make their own luck, as Bill Shankly once said. During the second half at Levante, a goal down and struggling to put their game together, goalkeeper Valdes threw the ball out carelessly. Levante's Rivera picked up the ball about 35 yards out and hit a first-time steamer towards the goal of the champions elect. Valdes didn't even bother, watching it sail past seemingly into the net.
But the ball cannoned off the right-hand post and back into play. Any other season, and it would have gone in. Levante needed it too. The following day, Mallorca beat Athletic Bilbao in a 4-3 cracker and pulled up to one point behind the other team from Valencia.
That ricochet from the post ensured that the struggle for the league title would go no further, and that Mallorca might survive at Levante's expense.
We shall see. Rather odd, in this light, to see Levante standing off Barça during ther last few minutes of the game, allowing them to play short passes around the back amongst themselves, to play out the draw. It was an unedifying spectacle, and one that made little sense, given what was at stake for the home team. Maybe they'd just surrendered to destiny. Tell that to Mallorca, who still trail them by that one point, with two games to go.
But let's not get churlish. One could just as easily claim that Barça have had some wretched luck this season - specifically in that wonderful tussle with Chelsea and generally with a horrendous run of injuries to seemingly key players - Larsson, Motta, Gabri and Edmilson all fell by the wayside, and Maxi López completed the list during the final run-in. No matter. They kept it going, and the statistics cannot lie.
Only Atlético Madrid, in the 1996 double season, have won more away games - and that was when the league had 22 teams. One more victory will see them take the highest points haul of all time in La Liga, and to conclude, they've done it as a team.
Players like Marquez, Belleti, Gio and Oleguer have quietly gone about their business, whilst the more spectacular signings have gone about theirs. They've set out to entertain, basing their success on possession of the ball, not contention. The best side in Europe? I'm not sure - but they've sure been the best to watch.
The only negative note on the day when the league was finally decided, was that annoying Spanish phrase 'no se juega nada' (there's nothing to play for).
Teams in the middle zone of the table, supposedly thinking about their summer holidays, could not be trusted to turn out and play seriously against those with something still at stake. It remains the cancer at the heart of this wonderful yet at times dysfunctional league.
A glance at the English Premiership's last day, where Fulham relegated Norwich 6-0 on a day when no se juega nada for the former side, says everything about the selfless professionalism of the English scene.
The Spanish could as yet take a leaf out of that particular book.
