Regionalism in Spanish fiction from 1654 to the present day, with especial reference to Pereda

Abstract

Owing to geographical and racial conditions, an intense localism has always characterized the Spaniard. It was not till the nineteenth century when the Episodios Nacionales of Pérez Galdós were read in every corner of the land that Spaniards as a whole acquired a sense of national unity. This local spirit one would expect to find reflected in the literature of the country, and it is so, for regionalism is its very hall-mark; and no literary form flourished more in the nineteenth century than the regional novel.