Dos pequeños “monstruos” en las novelas contemporáneas de Benito Pérez Galdós
Two “Little Monsters” in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Contemporary Novels

Summary/Abstract: Needless to say, Benito Pérez Galdós lived to recount the most trivial experiences of his contemporaries, so that his works constitute the fictionalised history of Spain in the 19th century. For the illustrious writer, the novel is an “image of life”, as he himself confessed in his admission speech at the Royal Academy. As he aspired to leave a rigorous and faithful testimony of the life of his contemporaries, Galdós had to grant particular importance to the smaller inhabitants of the Spain of his time. There are numerous children in Galdós’s novels, children of all ages and from all walks of life, who behave like children in real life and have the same concerns as their flesh and blood models. Among them there are two deformed children, two little “monsters”, whose deformity greatly afflicts their mothers. The first is Valentín, the son that Torquemada has with Fidela in Torquemada and San Pedro, and the second is “Riquín”, the son that Isidora Rufete has with Joaquín Pez in La desheredada.

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