At the beginning of the 20th century, Spain began to develop an incipient taste for a new type of realistic novel, partly as a reaction to the stagnant bourgeois aesthetics of the previous century. This is a so-called ‘modernist’ narrative, of a more sentimental and even romantic character, as opposed to the mere objective description of the reality of the preceding authors. Modernist writers reject the ugly and prosaic view of the reality of realist writers of the previous century.  On the contrary, their prose seeks to imprint spirituality to the landscape, looking for an intimate emotion in the description of reality.

It is with Valle-Inclán that the modernist movement reaches its peak. His prose is distinguished by a refined, sensual, and rhythmic style, which brings an unusual beauty to the text. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of his prose in relation to his contemporaries is the ironic distance with which he separates himself from the typical modernist heroes. It is in part the author's own life trajectory that leads to this result. An individual of intense feelings, if as a young man he adheres to reactionary right-wing positions, at the end of his life his values ​​are those of a revolutionary extremist.

He's overall an author of singular sensitivity and intelligence. In his Sonatas, a collection of narratives, he develops the distinctive character called  Marques de Bradomín, a Don Juan who he describes as ‘ugly, catholic and sentimental’, perhaps the residue that reflects the intellectual maturity of the author himself. Throughout the series of books, the character's personality unfolds in an exquisite, chivalrous, and romantic world, the author's wink to the reader expressing his longing for better times that, however, the author himself knows never existed. It is all the fruit of the exuberant and brilliant imagination of this extraordinary writer.

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Modernism in Spanish literature.

The decadently refined aesthetic of Valle Inclán

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