Galdós dedication to literature is titanic, with a huge production in which he promotes his spirit of liberal political convictions, sharply critical of the panorama he meticulously describes in his writings. His Episodios nacionales constitute an ambitious nineteenth-century fictional project about the Spanish history of his time. In them, he makes a criticism of Spanish intransigence, in the face of fratricidal confrontations develop over the past century. Attentive to detail and for the shake of objectivity, he rigorously documents himself before writing the historical recounts, in a constant effort to undermine his personal approach to the facts. 

In his novels, he makes an analysis perhaps more objective than in his Episodios nacionales, with detail and often crude descriptions of the characters' social conditions, fiction providing him more room for his personal reflections. Ever obsessed with the ideological confrontations of the Spanish people, in his novels in he often opposes an open-minded and modern protagonist to characters with a narrow traditionalist mentality. This ever-present attack on intransigence and fanaticism turns these works into "thesis" novels.

Galdós is a powerful painter of environments, streets, and plazas of Madrid, even the interiors evoked with an indelible sense of authenticity. Nevertheless, more than anything,  he is a "realist of souls." His characters possess a truthfulness that can only be obtained by the author's remarkable and penetrating insight into the human heart and a rare capacity for understanding humanity. His literary character sketching uses a rather spontaneous impressionist technique, in which with loose brushstrokes, such as the way of speaking or gestures, he composes very vivid portraits. His spontaneous style is spontaneous produces prose of great expressiveness, agile, and full of great features incite the reader to new and enhance reflection on the portraited reality.

Episodios nacionales

Doña Perfecta

Fortunata y Jacinta

La desheredada

Nazarín

Misericordia

Misericordia is a realistic novel that narrates the world of beggars, cripples and other needy people from the underworld of the capital of Madrid.

Narrative

Social criticism

In 1927, a series of young writers gathered at the Seville Athenaeum to commemorate the third centenary of Góngora's death. There are writers like García Lorca, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Alberti, Salinas, Vicente Aleixandre, and Luis Cernuda, among the most representative of what would later become the Generation of '27. Of approximate age and similar academic training, they constitute a compact group and all its members were aware of belonging to the group of this literary generation.

 The Generation of ‘27 has been characterized since its origin by the search for a new poetic language, even when each member develops their personal style. These poets' desire for renewal is combined with fair respect for the literature of the past. They admired Unamuno, and especially Antonio Machado, they fairly valued Rubén Darío and felt a fascination for Juan Ramón Jiménez and Bécquer, especially in his early days. In their search for a strictly poetic language, the example of Góngora was decisive, well known by the elaborate language within in his work Polifemo. 

Despite their highly cultured aesthetics, these writers have a veneration for popular forms, such as the traditional Cancionero and ballads. In addition to this admiration for tradition, they were also influenced by foreign literary currents, such as the French poet Valèry or the Anglo-Saxon T. S. Eliot. The group evolves from the original search for pure poetry, with even dehumanizing features due to its influence with the surrealist movement, towards the literature of social commitment, in the years preceding the Spanish Civil War, assimilating past and traditional forms with other more modern ones and produces an immense renewal of Spanish lyric.

Realism

Benito Pérez Galdós publishes his first novel, La fontana de oro. 

Benito Pérez Galdós starts his Episodios nacinales, a collection of forty-six historical novel on Spanish history.

Gaspar Nuñez de Arce writes Gritos de combate , a series of articles  on freedom and orden.

José María de Perede writes El sabor de la tierruca, a model of regional novel.

Émile Zola starts the cycle of twenty novels know as Les Rougon-Macquart.

Guy de Maupassant writes the short story A life, on the tension between stasis and change.

Leopoldo Lugones publishes Las montañas del oro.

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Misericordia (1897)

By Benito Pérez Galdós

Time Period: Realism

Genre: Narrative, Social criticism

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