De Oñate a La Granja

''De Oñate a La Granja'' by Benito Pérez Galdós is a historical novel written in the early 20th century. It follows the young liberal Fernando Calpena and the priest Pedro Hillo, who are jailed at the behest of a powerful, unseen patroness while Madrid boils with conspiracies, journalistic feuds, and court politics during the First Carlist War. Love, identity, and social ambition intersect with sharp sketches of statesmen and soldiers, foreshadowing the crisis that leads from Oñate to the La Granja uprising. Expect intimate intrigue tightly woven into national history. The opening of this novel presents Calpena and Hillo enduring a paid cell, trading bitter jokes about their captor and the farce of politics, while Calpena’s fury subsides into anxious thoughts of his beloved Aura. A long letter from the “incógnita” apologizes yet justifies their confinement as the only way to stop Fernando’s ruinous romance, promises to protect Hillo’s clerical reputation and future, and reports that Aura is being whisked away north; she then bombards Fernando with witty, cutting dispatches from Madrid—on the premiere of El trovador, venomous journalism, censorship, Mendizábal’s virtues and limits, and a fervent panegyric of General Córdova, even floating talk of a dictatorship. Restless, Calpena ventures into the patio, meets the conspiratorial Rufete, Canencia, and Fonsagrada—who hail him as a key agitator tied to the Guard—and arranges to “coordinate” future moves; he also crosses paths with Iglesias and hears of Aviraneta’s shadowy reach. The section ends as these prison-yard allies begin to share messages linked to Calpena’s past connections.