Centenary of Benito Pérez Galdós, 1843-1920

Benito Pérez Galdós, considered in Spain the second national novelist after Miguel Cervantes, is little known outside our borders. During the XIX century, his novels were translated to almost all the European languages, being the most known of that moment Doña Perfecta (1876). However, his best novels, the so-called contemporary ones, such as Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-1887) remained untranslated. It was not until the eighties of the last century that a good translation of his masterpiece appeared in English.

The best portrait of modern Spain remained unpublished in Europe. Against this background, we will present the many faces of Galdós, who in addition to being a novelist was a playwright, essayist, painter, politician, musician and editor. And, next, we will focus on commenting on the characteristics of this great Spanish and European novelist, what distinguishes him, for example, from Balzac and Dickens, essentially his capacity to transmit human truth, different from the social or religious truth favoured by his contemporaries. We will finish explaining the importance and singularity of Galdosian, who together with the painter Joaquín Sorolla, the musician Isaac Albéniz, among others, offer a luminous image of modern Spain, of the secular democratic, secular nation, born of the Revolution of 1868, which differs from the stereotypes offered by the black legend or the folkloric one, full of Andalusian afflictions.

The conference is conducted by the professor of Spanish literature Germán Gullón, a member of the School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, and a specialist in the figure of Benito Pérez Galdós.