If we advise you to visit the Museum dedicated to the Gálvez family, located in the Avenida de los Gálvez, it’s because this was no ordinary family. Up to five of its members, four of them brothers, became prominent and influential in the Spain of the Enlightenment.
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If we advise you to visit the Museum dedicated to the Gálvez family, located in the Avenida de los Gálvez, it’s because this was no ordinary family. Up to five of its members, four of them brothers, became prominent and influential in the Spain of the Enlightenment.
Miguel de Gálvez played several roles in the political life of the time. Among them, he served as Ambassador to the Prussian Court of Frederic the Great. To get to Prussia, they needed to cross Europe in a horse and carriage. The place was infested with robbers, roads blockers and dreary inns. However, the diplomat came to make good friends with Frederic and even a better friendship with the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, when he had to move to St. Petersburg. He got the Russian Tsarina to love the Malaga wine, and who knows if that was what improved the character of the fiery Empress. The thing is that a legend tells us how passionate she was, so much that even her many lovers weren’t enough… One day, while watching a horse mating… she decided to try… Well… the result… Vulva, colon, stomach and some other vital organs were destroyed, and Catherine passed away to a better life as a result of her insatiable sexual appetite.
But the life of Miguel´s brother, José, was equally as important, minister of King Charles III and Marquis of Sonora, he built up power and dignity, handled big business in America and still had time to found the Archives of the Indies. Part of his frenetic activity was focused on leaving King George of England without his American colonies, his helper on the ground was another Gálvez. Miguel put him in command of armies with which he gave decisive disappointments to the English, in what today is the south of the United States.
His name was Bernardo, he was a nephew of those mentioned above, and he did not know how to sit still: a long experience as a soldier in Africa, the now Mexican border and other unruly places were his favourite places.
But the fact is that neither Jose nor Bernardo, the best-known members of the family, were alive when the palace, in which the Gálvez family lived, was built. It was located in Malaga and sadly doesn’t exist anymore.
