It’s been over a century since Oscar Wilde opined that “life imitates art more than art imitates life,” and if you believe that the beautiful game is a free-flowing athletic art form, this weekend’s Clasico proved that sometimes art and life work in tandem as the results of Thursday’s snap election replayed on Santiago Bernabeu’s pitch when Barcelona beat Real Madrid with a 3-0 thumping.

The game of two halves played out with one distinct flow for the first 45 minutes as Real Madrid took the lion’s share of the attack and launched repeated attempts at the Barcelona goal. It almost seemed too easy when a Toni Kroos corner within the first two minutes ended with a classic Ronaldo floating header that flew past Marc-Andre ter Stegen and bounced off the crossbar into the back of the net – but it was flagged for offside and disallowed.

With the benefit of hindsight, this appears to have been an omen for Real Madrid going forward. Though they kept Barcelona trapped in their own half, in front of net, they couldn’t put anything together: Within the first 10 minutes, Dani Carvajal flubbed a long-range shot that bounced directly into the waiting arms of ter Stegen and Ronaldo had the miss of the season as he swung at an incoming cross and volleyed nothing but sky. Were it intentional, it would have been a clever trick as everybody was so convinced that Ronaldo was going to smash it in that the ball rolled freely into open space, giving an opening to Carvajal to try and recover. But he was also convinced and reacted a little too slowly, ultimately sending the ball out for a goal kick.

Barcelona, to their credit, didn’t get nervous or show any signs of fatigue in the face of this onslaught. Even with six or seven players in the box, there was no confusion and the only truly cynical foul came when Luka Modric burst through the high line forcing Thomas Vermaelen to chop him down. When they could force their way past Real, Barcelona displayed a solid counter attacking style that led to several dangerous chances – equally as dangerous as those coming from Ronaldo and co. at the opposite end – from Luis Suarez and Paulinho.

Towards the end of the half, Real’s siege broke and the game almost started to feel like it was being played on a full pitch, but it went into the break 0-0, leaving many to wonder if the teams were missing a spark. Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are the undisputed footballing icons of our era but they aren’t perfect, and they are getting older – Messi has already said he will retire once his new Barcelona contract expires in 2022 - and it was starting to appear that this would be another game that would have netizens bleating about Ronaldo bottling it and Messi being invisible in another big match.

Not only that, but last season, both sides were known for their all-star attacking trios. Real Madrid had the unfortunately nicknamed "BBC" of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano (Ronaldo) and Barcelona had Neymar Jr. to back up the duo of Suarez and Messi. While Neymar Jr. was completely absent due to his controversial big money move to Ligue 1’s Paris Saint-Germain, Gareth Bale, as well as Isco and Marco Asensio – two attacking midfielders seemingly brought to enhance their goal scoring prowess – were left on Madrid's bench.

The more things change, the more they stay the same and when the second half kicked off, the flow of the game remained – only this time it was Barcelona on the attack, and it very quickly looked like Madrid had been sucked in to a 90 minute rope-a-dope. Rather than constantly press ahead as Madrid had done, Barcelona played a quick passing game, drawing defenders out of position and giving players room to maneuver. Before 10 minutes of the second half had been played, a hole had opened in midfield, giving Ivan Rakitic a gap of almost the entire Real Madrid half and on the edge of the box, he found Sergi Roberto who fired it back immediately across the goal mouth and towards the waiting boot of Luis Suarez.

Real Madrid had been ripped apart physically and, following that goal, started to crumble mentally too. Both Casemiro and Sergio Ramos tangled with Suarez, who is always up for a scrap, and in between manager Zinedine Zidane deciding to bring Bale and Asensio on to replace Casemiro and Mateo Kovacic and them actually getting on the pitch, a goal line scramble ended with Carvajal getting a red card for a handball and a penalty, which was easily converted by Messi, putting Barcelona up 2-0. Real Madrid would now play with 10, making Zidane look like a man who had gone from trying to right a capsizing ship to a man rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

From there, the game was academic, and it seemed everyone knew this besides Bale who played with the kind of energy and purpose that would have benefit his team were they not so far down with so little time left. Even with Madrid in lockdown, they were lucky to avoid further punishment from Suarez, whose later attempts only narrowly missed the goal.

And then, as with the second Clasico from last season, in which Messi came from nowhere to score the winner in the second minute of extra time, he came out of nowhere to put the finishing touches on an already clear cut scoreline. This time, he wrong-footed Marcelo and cut back from the very edge of the pitch to find Aleix Vidal, surprising even Vidal himself, who scuffed the shot, causing the ball to bobble in a slow and awkward fashion under Kaylor Navas and over the goal line, making it officially 3-0.

Now 14 points ahead of Real Madrid, it appears that Barcelona already won the league – a far cry from the expectations of last season, when Real Madrid won the Champions League, La Liga, the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup.

And yet, in the greater context of Spain, this result appears more like a synecdoche for the country instead of a one-off surprise. In fact, it almost seems too obvious: Only three days from the country’s snap elections, a team of Catalonians come to Madrid, assert their will and leave their opponents in shambles.

While rarely reaching the fever pitch of the Madrid derby, the Clasico is always a highly emotional event and this was the first to take place since the Catalan independence referendum on October 1. The region in northeast Spain overwhelmingly voted to become independent from Madrid and officially became a republic before the Spanish government stepped in and took complete control over the previously autonomous community.

The chaos that has taken over the region, ranging from a brutal police crackdown on people voting in the referendum to Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont fleeing to Belgium to avoid arrest, was intended to come to an end with the snap elections that took place on December 21 – instead they made the future look even more unclear.

The Ciutadans political party supports Spanish unity and received the most votes, but as a proportion, came a distant second to the pro-independence parties which took a combined 70 out of the contested 135 seats. That includes Puigdemont’s party, Together For Catalonia, which he is still the leader of and still campaigns for out of Brussels.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has until January 23, 2018 to put a government together, and he has to do so while dealing with absent political leaders, a faltering economy and his own party’s unpopularity. In the election, his People’s Party lost seats, dropping from an already meager 10 to three.

La Liga is regularly disparaged for being a two-horse race: Since 1929, Real Madrid and Barcelona have together won the league 57 times, which is 28 times more than the other seven winners combined, but with an uncertain future ahead of it, Spain probably wishes its politics were as reliable as its most famous institution.