Blas de Lezo y Olavarrieta (3 February 1689 - 7 September 1741) was a Spanish admiral of the 17th and 18th centuries, considered by many one of the best naval commanders and also one of the premier Handicapped Badasses in history. Already famous by his brilliance despite having lost an eye, a hand and a leg at the very beginning of his career, in an odd refrain of the previous war hero Julián Romero, Lezo would finish carving his legacy during the War of Jenkins' Ear against Great Britain, during which, in an action that would ultimately entail his Heroic Sacrifice, he successfully organized the defense of the viceroyal city of Cartagena de Indias against a British fleet six times bigger than his garrison. He is popularly believed to have been known by the quaint nicknames of Mediohombre ("Half-Man", not necessary to explain the joke) and Patapalo ("Peg-Leg"), although those names actually first appear in posterior chronicles and there is no evidence of them being used as early as his own time.
Being a Spanish historical figure and having achieved a politically untergiversable feat is not a good combination to be remembered in modern popular culture, especially in his own country, but Lezo could be considered the first exception to this, having been re-appreciated in the Internet boom of the 2000s as possibly the original Memetic Badass of Spanish history. Various quotations of his, whether historically true or obviously made up, are repeated and celebrated by Spaniards of patriotic feelings, the greatest being the quirky and almost certainly apocryphal line, "Every good Spaniard should piss always looking at England." More recently, he was the protagonist of a trolling campaign in 2016 when Spanish jokesters mass-voted a name poll so that a British scientific submarine would be named Blas de Lezo - which was only stopped when the organizers of the poll removed the whole option.
The heir of a Basque family with a strong naval tradition, the young Blas had his baptism by fire in the Bourbonic armada during the War of the Spanish Succession, although his excellent performance, which attracted the attention of King Louis XIV himself, would take a high toll on his body: he got his left leg ripped off under the knee by cannonfire in the 1704 Battle of Malaga, his eye burst by shrapnel in the 1701 Battle of Toulon, and his right arm rendered lame by a bullet in the Siege of Barcelona, all of them before he was 27.note For Lezo, however, those were but flesh wounds, and after being promoted to leading roles, he soon turned out to be a skilled commander with a large bag of tricks, innovating in the usage of smokescreens, incendiary ordnance, and naval guerrilla. The end of the war saw Lezo, now a decorated captain, being sent to escort convoys and hunt down enemy corsairs around the Spanish viceroyalties in America, a theater he would get to know well.
Despite his masterful captures of Dutch and English ships, Lezo's strategical disagreements with Viceroy José de Armendáriz disenchanted him to the point he considered retirement, and he was ultimately moved to the Mediterranean, where he participated in both the successful conquest of Oran and an additional operation to accelerate the local economy by Gunboat Diplomacy. Again, Lezo was the hero of the day, even although he happened to share fleet with Álvaro Navia-Osorio y Vigil, a strategist whom Frederick the Great himself would admire. Lezo also the curious honor to escort the last of the legendary Spanish treasure fleets, which were suppressed as a consequence of the divisive Bourbon Reforms. This caused his return to the viceroyalties, where he was initially in command of the Compañía de Armadores de Corso, an initiative to hire corsairs to disrupt the every-growing British contraband around the Caribbean, just in time for the War of Jenkins' Ear to start in 1739.
Lezo was stationed in Cartagena de Indias when the British fleet under Admiral Edward Vernon was repealed from its walls the first time. The invaders had better luck capturing a minor city, Portobello, after which Lezo and Vernon crossed letters, with the Spaniard launching the Badass Boast that, had only he been there, the outcome of the batle would have been another. Undaunted and surely laughing at the occurrence, Vernon returned to Cartagena with gigantic reinforcements, a fleet of 180 ships and 30,000 men that hopelessly dwarfed the 6 ships and 3,000-6,000 soldiers of the local garrison. This time, victory seemed so predictable to any sane person that the British wrote home announcing they had already won, which caused coins and medals to be made with the semblance of the episode. Lezo never learned about it, but he would have been surely offended that those pieces misspelled his first name (calling him "Blass") and portrayed him with all of his arms and legs (likely because people in Great Britain didn't know that much about Lezo).
The siege of Cartagena would be Lezo's great last deed. His first defense plan was to bottleneck to invaders in the port entry of San Luis de Boca Chica, but disagreements with Viceroy Sebastián de Eslava and the sheer enemy tonnage allowed the latter to force their way in, so Lezo changed his approach to a much simpler, Fabian-inspired one: they had only to lengthen the siege until the rainy season brought tropical diseases into the equation, which of course hit the British much harder due to their large manpower, cramped ship space and unfamiliarity with the Hispanic Hungry Jungle. Just as Lezo expected, nature turned the tide, and after suffering a combination of epidemics and zealous wall defense, the British were forced to give up and return home empty-handed, having lost a third of their contingent. Lezo himself would not see the end of the war, as an infected wound during the siege brought later the Half-Man finally down.
Lezo seemed to have inspired his spirit to his own men, as one of his popular quotes, another Badass Boast telling the English fleet to better go carry coal from Ireland to London rather than challenging the Spaniards again, was not uttered by Lezo, but by an underling of his, Juan Domingo de Ordozgoiti.
Ironically, or not so ironically considering that, again, we are talking about a Spaniard, Lezo's posthumous memory was immediately marred by Eslava asking and getting to demote him for his arguments during the siege. Despite this, a kinder King Charles III rewarded Lezo's son, appointing him Marquis of Ovieco. Several ships in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries have carried Lezo's name since.
In fiction
Comic Book- Lezo appears in The Ministry of Time spinoff comic book Mi tiempo se agota.
- Cartagena de Indias: Los 300 de Blas de Lezo by Alber Vázquez and Javier Navarro features him.
- Ángel Miranda's Lezo also showcases him.
- James A. Michener's novel Caribbean mentions Lezo.
- He appears in Juan Antonio Pérez-Foncea's novel El héroe del Caribe: La última batalla de Blas de Lezo.
- Lezo also stars in Alber Vázquez's Mediohombre: Blas de Lezo y la batalla que Inglaterra ocultó al mundo.
- El almirante by Luis Mollà also tells Lezo's story.
- Pablo Victoria Vilches' El día que España derrotó a Inglaterra also features him.
- Lezo has a cameo in The Ministry of Time, played by Vicente Colomar.
