3-098-971 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The body of General Mariano Álvarez de Castro, 1887. Brigadier Mariano José Manuel Bernardo Álvarez Bermúdez de Castro y López Aparicio (1749-1810) was a Spanish military officer, and the military governor of Girona during the siege by the French during the War of Spanish Independence. The deceased, a protagonist of the defence of Girona, was taken prisoner by the French, transported to Perpignan and then to Figueres, where he died on January 21, 1810. According to the Count of Toreno, the French displayed his body on a bier, his face swollen and purplish, like a man who had been drowned. The Count cites a document indicating the possibility of murder, although this hypothesis was not supported by reality. Here various figures mourn the fallen general: a monk kneeling in prayer, a group of peasants from Girona wearing espadrilles, a weeping woman.