Written and published in 1897, is one of Galdós's best works. Testimony of his ideological disappointment in the face of the failure of the regenerationist objectives that he dreamed of in the middle class, he has his greatest protagonist in the town. Galdós is the literary painter of nineteenth-century Madrid that he recreates throughout the entire novel: its streets, its most popular neighborhoods, cafes and taverns, diners and sleeping houses, the commercial drawers of some squares, oratories and churches , cemeteries... And along with this a magnificent collection of characters that move from the real to the imaginative, from the tangible to the symbolic in a careful mix that extends throughout the entire work.