Barceló's modest-class family owned a xebec, which they used for both delivery services and privateering across the Spanish Levante, but their high efficiency and bravery in the face of the Barbary piracy eventually got them hired by the Royal Armada. His father died when he was still a teenager, though, so the young Antonio found himself forced to learn how to hold his own in command of the ship, in which he turned out to be a natural. Soon, even the King Philip V had heard something about the small, private barge who consistently engaged and defeated Algerian and Tunisian pirate ships in its way from Palma de Mallorca to Barcelona and vice versa. By 1748, Barceló was a full-fledged lieutenant, routinely at the front of flotillas deployed to hunt down pirates, and he would cram a lush career as a privateer and anti-privateer. Solely from 1760 to 1769, he captured 19 ships and 1,600 prisoners, often while disadvantaged in numbers, weapons and quality of ships.
In 1775, Barceló saw large scale military action when he was recruited for Alejandro O'Reilly infamous expedition against Algiers, a state that served as a center of piracy and whose forces Barceló knew very well – the local Bey had put a contract on his head, only for Barceló to outclass and capture one bounty hunter after another for years. The expedition was a disaster, in no small part because the officers had dismissed Barceló’s proposition to launch a preliminary bombardment before disembarking, and it took Barceló himself again to cover the land troops with naval gunfire in order for someone to return. His role in the battle earned him a meteoric ascension through the ranks, although it marked the beginning of his many enmities within the royal navy for having made many important people look like idiots (which they were, let's be all honest here).
Barceló's appearance and manners didn't help to endear himself to the high aristocracy and military men of wealthy families that filled the upper ranks. He was a rude, uncultured Blood Knight who rumoredly barely knew how to write his own name, and added to that, he was ugly, fat and crossed by battle scars, including a bullet mark that disfigured his left cheek and a deafness caused by an illness and so much cannonfire over the years.
When The American Revolution came along, Barceló was part of the contingent who attempted the Great Siege of Gibraltar, where he coincided with the other great Spanish commander of the time, Luis de Córdova y Córdova; again, they would be both the Only Sane Man of their respective commandments, which should clue about how well did this siege go. The campaign, however, saw a curious Lensman Arms Race when a French engineer, Jean Le Michaud D'Arçon, innovated what we know now as floating batteries in order to best bombard Gibraltar, while Barceló presented his own solution in the form of improved gunboats which, despite being reportedly funny to see, moved like ninjas and hit like trains (in other words, like Barceló himself). At the end of the day, the batteries were an utter failure, and it would be precisely Córdova at the head of Barceló's gunboats who had to come to the rescue. After all was said and done, Barceló was acknowledged for his efforts and did the feat of coming out of a historical disaster with his career reinforced, much to the jealously of the staff.
As a further mark of distinction, Barceló's gunboats proved a revolutionary concept and remained in usage for a whole century after his death. As small boats apt to perform naval guerrilla and strategic defenses, the Spanish navy used them in plenty during the next Anglo-Spanish War, including the various attacks against Cádiz and the failed invasion of Tenerife in which Horatio Nelson lost his arm, and later in the Peninsular War and the conflicts in Cuba and Philippines, where they would be deployed in rivers and coasts.
The following year, Barceló helped to clean the royal armada's sheet for the previous failures by being put personally at the head of the next expeditions to Algiers, which had the beneplacit of Pope Pius VI himself and the support of Spain's eternal frenemy of Portugal. Although the operations were marked by the limit of damage you can do by actually just bombarding a place, which earned not few disappointments and rethought, Barceló generally managed to run an artillery clinic on them with minimal losses, which by this point was no small feat. Historiography is conflicted here, as in many things regarding Spain, and while some claim the Algerians somehow won the engagement, others say it was in fact a decisive victory for the subsequent negotiations. Upon the threat of a new bombardment by Barceló, both Algiers and Tunis acceded to sign peace with Spain, ending most of the threat of the Barbary pirates until the Napoleonic age, when the United States took their turn in the Barbary Coast Wars.
Barceló was looking to have a last dance at 73, when he was called from retirement to prepare a relief expedition against Ceuta, besieged by Moroccans, but intrigues against him finally succeeded and managed to remove him from command at the very last moment. When King Charles IV finally stepped in to cut the nonsense, the climate and the death of the Moroccan sultan had prevented the conflict by themselves, and Barceló had to go home, disappointed of not being able to have a Moor in his sights a last time. He died seven years later, being buried as a local hero.
In fiction
Literature- Famous poet Vicente Antonio García de la Huerta praised Barceló.
Resuélvese asolar el nido infamede donde tantos daños se propagan,y, cometida a Barceló la empresa,empieza la elección a asegurarla.note
