Benito Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realism novelist. He was a prominent literary character in nineteenth-century Spain, and some scholars rank him second only to Miguel de Cervantes as a Spanish novelist. Pérez Galdós was a prolific writer, having published 31 major novels, 46 historical novels in five series, 23 plays, and the equivalent of 20 volumes of short fiction, journalism, and other works. He is still popular in Spain and is regarded as equal to Dickens, Balzac, and Tolstoy. He is less well-known in Anglophone countries, yet several of his works have been translated into English. His play Realidad (1892) is significant in the evolution of realism in Spanish theatre. Pérez Galdós was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912, but his hostility to religious authorities resulted in a boycott by conservative parts of Spanish society and traditionalist Catholics, who did not recognize his literary merit. Galdós was interested in politics, but did not consider himself a politician. His political roots were liberal, but he eventually adopted republicanism and ultimately socialism under Pablo Iglesias Posse. He first joined the Sagasta Progressive Party and was elected deputy for Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1886. In the early twentieth century, he joined the Republican Party and was elected as a representative to the Madrid cortes for the Conjunción Republicano Socialista in the 1907 and 1910 legislatures.
