Benito Pérez Galdós Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Benito Pérez Galdós (May 10, 1843 – January 4, 1920) was a Spanish novelist. Considered by many second only to Cervantes in stature, Pérez Galdós was the greatest Spanish realist novelist. Born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, he moved to Madrid at the age of 20 where he spent most of his adult life. Within Spain his most popular works are the earlier works – the Episodios nacionales (46 volumes). Outside Spain it the Novelas españolas contemporáneas which grip the imagination.The early novels mix historical and fictional characters and are the result of documentary research. As with Balzac, some characters appear in separate novels. They cover the period from 1805 to the end of the century. We see glimpses of Benito's liberal and anti-clerical views which become move developed in the contemporary novels. In Doña Perfecta (1876) a young liberal comes to a stiflingly clerical town. In Miau (1888) a pretentious family lose their livelihood when the father, an elderly civil servant, loses his job through a change in government, and eventually commits suicide. Pérez Galdós' masterpiece is Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-7). It is almost as long as War and Peace and concerns the fortunes of four characters: a young man about town, his wife, his lower-class mistress and her husband. Ángel Guerra (1891) is the story of an unbalanced man who attempts to win a devout and inaccessible woman, swinging from agnosticism to Catholicism in the process. Pérez Galdós is more realistic than Balzac or Tolstoy, and like Dickens, depicts middle-class snobbishness and fear of poverty. Hardy any of his writings were available in English until the 1950s and are still increasing in popularity.
In 1897, Pérez Galdós was elected to the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), and in 1907 he became a deputy for the republican party in the Madrid parliament. He went blind in 1912 but continued to dictate his books for the rest of his life. His plays are less successful, though Realidad (1892) is important in the history of realism in the Spanish theatre.
There have been many films of his novels: Beauty in Chains (Doña Perfecta) was directed by Elsie Jane Wilson in 1918. Luis Buñuel, in a mean-spirited mood, failed to credit the fact that Viridiana (1961) was based on Halma. He made another adaption with Nazarín in 1959, and his Tristana (1970) was similarly based on Pérez Galdós. El Abuelo (The Grandfather), filmed by José Luis Garci in 1998, was released at international level a year later. But his chance at long-lasting international fame was sabotaged by his own jealous countrymen, when they launched a slander campaign against him after learning that he would be nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Benito Pérez Galdós died at the age of 76. Shortly before his death, a statue in his honor was constructed in the Parque del Retiro, the most popular park in Madrid, financed solely by public donations.