Joseph O’Lawlor (sometimes O’Lalor; 11 July 1768 – 19 October 1850) was an Irish-born Spanish general who fought under the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars and later served as Governor of Granada.
[1][2] He was born on 11 July 1768 at Clonaheen in the parish of Rosenallis, County Laois, Ireland, to Peter Lalor and Elizabeth Brenan.
Orphaned at an early age, he and his younger brother James (1770–1808) went to Spain around 1785 in the care of a cleric attached to the Irish Brigade, and joined the Spanish military service in the College of Artillery.
Gen. O'Lawlor, an officer of great merit, who has served most meritoriously during the whole war, attached to the British headquarters, and whom I had sent in the month of January last to the late Regency with dispatches, containing accounts of the military successes gained at that period.
[8][9] At the end of the war, in 1814, he was named, first, military governor and, later, Captain General of the kingdom of Granada, an office he held until 1833.
[10][11] During this period, "...he was required to execute the repression orders given from Madrid to suffocate the conspiracies and rebellions of which Granada was an important focus, but he also did what he could to temper the rigors of the law on behalf of the condemned.
For example, his efforts (in vain) to intervene with King Ferdinand VII in the case of Mariana Pineda to save her from the gallows (were) recognized even by foreign authors who had harshly criticized that unjust sentence.
1830 – 16 July 1908), married Manuel Bermúdez de Castro y Díez (1811–1870), a senator and Minister for the Interior and Foreign Affairs.