That's how it was...cycle of conferences: Galdós and the palaces of Madrid

Galdós' work is more associated with middle-class and popular environments, but there is no shortage of references to the residences, real or imaginary, of the wealthiest. Essential in the Villa and Court of the 19th century were the old-fashioned aristocrats, the financiers, the ennobled new rich, those who were ruined or those who prospered, and therefore lost or created houses to represent their social importance. 

All of them appear in the vast Galdosian social fresco of Elizabethan and Alfonsine Madrid, and therefore their residences are also reflected in it, starting with the Royal Palace in Bringas's, those of the old aristocracy in The disinherited y The forbidden, and those of the old and the new in the novels of Torquemada. But more than by references to specific buildings, Galdós brings us closer to Madrid's palaces by focusing on their reasons for being: power, old and new money, the use of the arts for social representation.

The cycle was scientifically coordinated by José Luis Sancho Gaspar, researcher at National Heritage, and took place in October 2020 with three sessions that were articulated as a conference / colloquium between the guest and the coordinator to deepen the proposed topics.