Narvaez

Narváez is the second novel in the fourth series of the National Episodes of Benito Pérez Galdós.
Although married out of interest, the protagonist Pepe García Fajardo, the new marquis, has discovered that his wife does not have a fool’s hair, but is rather of an outstanding intelligence and a religious skepticism that fits perfectly with his. But this does not prevent him, despite Fajardo’s love for his wife, from having an old friend as a lover.
Continuing with the narrative in the form of a diary of García Fajardo, which has begun in the previous Las tormentas del 48, this episode introduces us to the media close to the Government and the Court, with their grotesque cliques. There we will meet “the Espadón de Loja”, General Ramón María Narváez, who faced from power, at the head of a repressive moderantism, the turbulence that shook all of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. As Galdós describes him: “He is a man of both will and intelligence; But it lacks the spring that makes these two precious and fundamental pieces of the psychic mechanism move in concert.” Thus, we witness the conspiracies against him that on October 19, 1849 end with Narváez leaving the government for two days (October 19 and 20), being replaced by a government called, with justice, lightning government.