The four times world champion was utterly dominant, leading untroubled from pole position to chequered flag and beating second placed Juan Pablo Montoya’s Williams by 35.6 seconds.
Montoya’s second place was enough to move him above his team mate Ralf Schumacher — who had a miserable day — into second place in the championship with 23 points, still 21 behind the elder Schumacher.
It was Schumacher’s 57th career win, a fitting celebration for a man who has now started more races for Ferrari than any other driver, and his second Spanish victory in succession.
McLaren’s David Coulthard was third, German Nick Heidfeld fourth in a Ferrari-powered Sauber ahead of Brazilian team mate Felipe Massa.
Germany’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen collected Arrows first point of the season, and his first for more than a year, with sixth place.
The only scare of Schumacher’s day came in the warm-up, when his car ground to a halt with a hydraulics problem, but Ferrari’s hopes of a repeat of their one-two finish in the last race in Italy were short lived.
Brazilian Rubens Barrichello, who thought his run of bad luck had ended with his second place at the San Marino Grand Prix, failed to start after a gear selection problem stranded his car on the grid before the formation lap.
The scarlet car was pushed back to the pits and Barrichello retired with just one finish and six points to his name after five races.
Montoya inherited second place after team mate Ralf Schumacher ran wide and damaged his nose and front wing, forcing an unscheduled pit stop that dropped him from second to 13th and a lap behind his older brother.
To compound his misery he suffered an engine failure on the final lap and could not finish the race.
The Colombian, also second behind Schumacher here last year, could have been closer to the Ferrari at the finish had he not had a disastrous second pitstop in which he ran over the foot of chief mechanic and ‘lollipop’ man Carl Gaden.
There was disappointment for Renault, who had both cars in the points and Jenson Button in third place at the halfway stage, but failed to score.
Button retired with two laps to go.
Team owner Eddie Jordan, who axed 15 percent of his workforce last week, was another left shaking his fist at the sky after his cars failed to last more than 12 laps.
Jordan have yet to score a point this season and Italian Giancarlo Fisichella and Japan’s Takuma Sato continued a depressing run with the former retiring after five laps and Sato skidding out into the gravel on 11.
Minardi did not even make it to the starting grid, pulling their cars out Sunday morning for safety reasons after Australian Mark Webber had a high-speed rear wing failure in the morning warm-up.
A similar problem hit Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen during the race, his McLaren’s rear wing shearing off on the straight while he was running fourth on lap four.
The youngster drove into the pits and retired.
Pedro de la Rosa, the lone Spaniard in a race watched by the country’s monarch, King Juan Carlos, lasted three laps before he spun his Jaguar off into the gravel trap.
Results (race distance: 65 laps, 307.327 kms): 1. Michael Schumacher (Germany) Ferrari 1 hour 30 minutes 29.981 seconds (average speed 203.753 kph; 2. Juan Pablo Montoya (Colombia) Williams 1:31:05.610; 3. David Coulthard (Britain) McLaren 1:31:12.604; 4. Nick Heidfeld (Germany) Sauber 1:31:36.677; 5. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Sauber 1:31:48.954; 6. Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Germany) Arrows 1:31:50.410; 7. Jacques Villeneuve (Canada) BAR one lap behind; 8. Allan McNish (Britain) Toyota one lap; 9. Mika Salo (Finland) Toyota one lap; 10. Jarno Trulli (Italy) Renault two laps; 11. Ralf Schumacher (Germany) Williams two laps; 12. Jenson Button (Britain) Renault five laps.
Not classified (did not finish): Olivier Panis (France) BAR 43 laps completed; Eddie Irvine (Britain) Jaguar 41; Enrique Bernoldi (Brazil) Arrows 40; Takuma Sato (Japan) Jordan 10; Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy) Jordan 5; Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) McLaren 4; Pedro de la Rosa (Spain) Jaguar 2.
Did not start: Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Ferrari.
Fastest lap: Michael Schumacher, lap 49, 1 minute 20.355 seconds (211.909 kph).—Reuters