This book analyses Galdós's critical engagement with the socio-economic changes that shaped the liberal society of his time through a close study of seven key Novelas Contemporáneas from the 1880s and 1890s: Lo prohibido (1884– 85), the four Torquemada novels (1889–95), Ángel Guerra (1891) and Misericordia (1897). My study highlights Galdós's historical approach to his portrayal of Restoration society in these novels, particularly his perception that this society, one still in transition, was the result of the fundamental transformations that had taken place throughout the nineteenth century.

In order to establish the context, this introduction will begin by examining the ways in which recent social historians and literary critics have approached the subjects of Spain's transition from Old Regime to modern nation state and the role of the realist novel in this transition. The related questions of the extent to which Spanish society was reshaped by liberalism, and of the degree to which it succeeded in its process of modernisation, have attracted much attention from scholars of nineteenth-century social history to date. As has often been pointed out, the socio-economic and political processes generally associated with modernity tend to be defined in relation to British and French liberal models, and as a result the modernising dynamics of countries such as Spain have been underestimated. This question is complicated by the fact that, as Millán and Romeo note, there is a diversity of socio-economic circumstances that can be included in the broad notion of liberalism. As they also observe, it is important to acknowledge that the historical process must be understood as a continuum, and that it is compounded of contradictory and simultaneous elements (Millán and Romeo 2004: 285). In their view, nonetheless, it is evident that Spain experienced profound changes throughout the century, such as the centralisation of political power, the elimination of legal privilege and a reordering of social hierarchies that enabled a degree of social mobility (Millán and Romeo 2004: 288).

These socio-economic transformations went hand in hand with cultural movements that were also associated with the notion of modernity in Western societies. As Harvey argues, the condition of modernity, from an intellectual perspective, has been linked to an idea of ephemerality and change since the middle of the nineteenth century (Harvey 1989: 10).