Bernardo de Gálvez

Bernardo de Gálvez commanded the Spanish troops that participated in the American War of Independence. Their military campaigns against British settlements along the Mississippi River, as well as in Mobile and Pensacola, were crucial in preventing them from regrouping their land and naval forces to launch against General Washington's troops, which would have changed the course of war.Bernardo de Gálvez has a statue in downtown Washington, a portrait in the United States Congress, a town in Texas named after him, Galveston, and another in Louisiana, Galvez; and yet his figure is still quite unknown in Spain. Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia tries to make known to the Spanish reader who this historical figure was who became governor of Florida and viceroy of New Spain, who fought the Apaches before the British, in a wide and precise biography that was first published in English in the United States, with a very good reception among readers, and academic and communication media.Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, after extensive research in archives in Spain, Mexico and the United States, discovers a character who was both a servant of the empire and a man of the Enlightenment, a central piece of both the history of the North American Revolution. as from America in the second half of the 18th century, essential in the design and application of the Spanish colonial reforms. But the book is much more than a typical biography. The author takes advantage of Gálvez's life experience to explain and situate ourselves in the historical framework in which he unfolded, as well as the tensions between the powers of the time and the factors of international politics that intersected in a war like that of Independence of the United States in which Spain intervened, although it was never formally an ally of the rebels.