Bernardo de Gálvez
Governor of Spanish Louisiana whose Gulf coast campaign (1779-1781) — Baton Rouge, Mobile, and the two-month siege of Pensacola — stripped Britain of its Gulf of Mexico bases during the American Revolution. In 2014 the United States conferred honorary citizenship on him, an honor granted on only seven other occasions in its history. Galveston bears his name.
Why this wins its question: Spain's decisive role in the American Revolution is the canonical example of the coverage gap this instance exists to close — and the United States' own statute book documents it. Claims bind the 2014 law (read in full) with the academic biography, and congressional historical judgments are labeled as such.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
By Public Law 113-229, approved 16 December 2014, the United States conferred honorary citizenship on Bernardo de Gálvez — the law itself noting that the honor had been granted on only seven other occasions in the country's history.
As governor of Spanish Louisiana, Gálvez led a multi-ethnic force against British West Florida, defeating the British at Baton Rouge, Natchez and Mobile and taking Pensacola, the capital of British West Florida, after a two-month siege in 1781 in which he was wounded — leaving Britain without naval bases on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Continental Congress formally declared its gratitude to Gálvez on 31 October 1778, and the 2014 law records the congressional judgment that Washington saw his victories as a deciding factor in the war's outcome — an attribution stated here as the resolution's finding, not as a verified Washington quotation.
After the war Gálvez served as viceroy of New Spain and directed the charting of the Gulf of Mexico; Galveston Bay, Galveston and other Gulf place-names derive from his title.