Like his European contemporaries and his Spanish predecessors during the Romantic movement in Spain, Galdós described and utilized many lame and crippled characters in his works. Some aspects of this creativity have been studied. First, we have the case of the eponymous protagonist in Tristana, which has attracted critical attention since the time of the novel’s publication in 1891. Also, with the publication in 1975 of Concha-Ruth Morell’s letters to Don Benito—which makes clear that she is the prototype for the protagonist—critical interest has taken a new turn; and, an attempt has been made to answer the question of why Galdós should choose to amputate the leg of the character, who is clearly a stand-in for his beautiful young mistress. Most recently, attention has been called to the relationship between certain lame characters and the devil—one of whose hallmarks is lameness—in Fortunata y Jacinta, Miau, and Ángel Guerra.
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