Mapping the Quixotic Imagination: Madrid in Galdos\u27s Misericordia

The project examines Pérez Galdós’s views on social regeneration of 19th-century Spain in one of his most acclaimed novels, “Misericordia”, by documenting the wanderings through 19th-century Madrid of the main characters of the novel through geolocation tools. The novel’s main character is a quixotic and self-sacrificing beggar who does not only challenge the cartographic power and the conceptualization of space imposed by a middle class seeking to control urban growth but also reappropriates civic values that had been robbed of all meaning by Spanish society at the time. From that perspective, “Misericordia” constitutes the writer’s ultimate vindication of the narrative genre as a space of dialogue to contribute to the ideological foundations of social progress in 19th-century Spain. The project employs tools such as Google Maps and ArcGIS to trace the character’s whereabouts, interactions, and ranges of emotions throughout the novel on the maps of 19th-century and contemporary Madrid, respectively, and documents how the characters’ material enrichment and social ascension are geographically traced as directly proportional to their spiritual (and physical) demise. Conversely, the protagonist undergoes a spiritual purification and finds the true meaning of charity in the suburban slums of Madrid. The multimedia nature of the project makes it a suitable medium to visualize two contending representations of the urban space: that of the 19th-century Spanish middle-class, and that of the marginalized, constantly struggling to expand the material and symbolic urban borders