Customer Reviews

The Cape of Don Francisco Torquemada

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This book is really 4 differet ones put together but originally, written and published separately. Nevertheless it reads as a one novel. One of the things that I most enjoy about Galdos is that when he creates a good secondary character he often comes back to it and continues with its development writting another novel around and about it. This is the case with Don Francisco at first only slightly sketched in "Fortunata y Jacinta" , "Doctor Centeno" and "Miau" and finally fully developed here. The work of Galdos is- to use one of Torquemada's favourite latin locutions- sui generis. We are treated to a tremendously complex study, characterization and transformation of the character-so tipical of 19th century naturalism- the attention to detail, the insight into the man's mind and soul is so profound and so well documented that Torquemada might easily rank amongst the most perfectly humane creations dreamed up by the writer. We follow Don Francisco through a series of deep transformations that take him from the very bottom of society to the highest circles of 19th century Madrilenian nobility. At the end of the day -Galdos seams to be telling us- in spite of all the social mobility of our time, in spite of the achivements and advances of the bourgeossy, you are what you were ment to be and nothing else and if you're born a peasant a peasant you'll die. So Torquemada comes back full circle to his origins which deep inside had always been undisturbed by the fuss. And there is, I think, where all the ingenuity of Galdos lays, in the change within the change that deep down never really happened.