El porvenir de España en Cánovas (1912) de Benito Pérez Galdós

Abstract

The fourth and fifth series of the Episodios Nacionales are a turning point in Benito Pérez Galdós’s attitude towards the construction of a liberal Spanish State during the second half of the 19^th century. If the first series show an optimistic attitude towards the development of the Spanish nation-building, the entrenchment of the Carlist wars, the interim government during the «periodo isabelino» and «La Restauración» change Galdós´s mood towards a pessimism that turns the nation into a chronically ill patient. At this point, I analyze the intersection that occurs in Cánovas (1912) between a clinical language depicting the historical problems of Spain as endogenous diseases and, on the other hand, a drift towards the fantastic and the irrational that brings Galdós closer to the later «Modernism». This drift comes from a disenchantment with the positivism that had characterized the Canarian writer and anticipates part of the disenchantment of later literary generations.