14 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Two women love the same spoiled man, but Madrid gives them very different places in his world.
Juanito Santa Cruz grows up surrounded by the comfort of a rich merchant family. He marries his gentle cousin Jacinta, who loves him and longs for a child. But Fortunata, a proud young woman from Madrid’s working poor, loves him too. As their lives cross, marriage, jealousy and class shape what each woman can hope for—and what she must face.
In Fortunata and Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós builds a city around this intimate conflict. Shopkeepers, priests, pawnbrokers and café gossips crowd the streets and households of nineteenth-century Madrid. Among them is Maxi Rubín, a frail dreamer who adores Fortunata and hopes love can reform her. A close, often funny narrator keeps personal desires and social pressures in the same frame.
What you’ll discover
- Two women beyond rivalry Meet Fortunata’s fierce pride and Jacinta’s gentleness, each shaped by a different place in society.
- Madrid in full voice Step among street sellers, family friends and café gossips who fill the city with talk.
- Comfort and its costs Enter the Santa Cruz household, where wealth and fierce family loyalty surround a spoiled son.
- The longing for motherhood Follow Jacinta’s wish for a child and see how deeply it shapes her world.
- Love against social boundaries Explore how desire and class press upon people who want love, dignity and belonging.
Who will love it
For readers who love big, humane novels about families, marriages and city life, who enjoy a narrator with a sense of humor, and who like to meet a whole society through its people.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Juanito learns that rules are optional
- A marriage carries another woman's name
- Fortunata wants love as her right
- Maxi loves the woman he imagines
- Respectability leaves Fortunata struggling to breathe
- Juanito returns and the marriage cracks
- Jacinta seeks the child she lacks
- Love crosses boundaries society keeps
- Every character has a case
Who’s who
- Juanito Santa CruzThe charming, spoiled son of a rich cloth merchant, he wants pleasure and variety but finally suffers when his wife withdraws her love.
- JacintaJuanito's gentle cousin and wife, she wants a child more than anything and slowly learns about her husband's past.
- FortunataA proud woman from the egg stalls who cannot read, she wants an honest home and the man she loves, and cannot have both.
- Barbarita ArnaizJuanito's devoted mother, a shopper and a church-goer who wants to protect her son and arranges his marriage.
- Maximiliano RubínA frail pharmacy student who falls for Fortunata and wants to save her, hoping to prove himself a man.
- Doña LupeMaxi's aunt, a thrifty widow and moneylender who rules her household and wants to shape everyone to her design.
- Plácido EstupiñáA talkative, devout old Madrid man who gathers gossip for the Santa Cruz family and wants to be useful.
- Guillermina PachecoA small, determined woman who begs and scolds to build an orphanage for poor children.
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Fortunata and Jacinta in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Fortunata and Jacinta
by Benito Pérez Galdós · 1887
A mother who knows no Latin translates her son's homework, and a city's two married women wait for him.
ChallengingOver 20 hours to read20 languages
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In short
Picture a mother who has never learned a word of Latin, translating her son's Latin exercises every night with fearless invention. That is Barbarita Arnaiz, and the boy is Juanito Santa Cruz, the handsome only child of a rich Madrid cloth merchant.
Fortunata and Jacinta at a glance
- Reading time
- About 27 h 50 min22 h 5 min fast, 33 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 397,500 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1887by Benito Pérez Galdós
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Juanito Santa Cruz grows up adored
Galdós opens with Juanito, the charming center around whom everyone else will turn. During a riot he is swept into a police chain and held for more than twenty hours, until his respected father gets him out.
His parents adore him. Barbarita fires questions at him when he comes home late, asking where he has been and why he smells of perfume. Don Baldomero laughs her fears away, for he remembers his own shy youth and decides that young men should see the world.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1887
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 28 h 35 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Pérez Galdós, Benito. Fortunata and Jacinta. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/fortunata-and-jacinta.
Pérez Galdós, B. (2026). Fortunata and Jacinta. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fortunata-and-jacinta (Original work published 1887)
Pérez Galdós, Benito. Fortunata and Jacinta. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fortunata-and-jacinta.
@book{perezgaldos2026fortunata,
author = {Pérez Galdós, Benito},
title = {Fortunata and Jacinta},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fortunata-and-jacinta},
note = {First published 1887}
}
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What is Fortunata and Jacinta about?
It follows two women in nineteenth-century Madrid, the wife Jacinta and Fortunata, a woman of the people, who both love Juanito Santa Cruz. Around them it pictures families, marriages, money, religion and the city's changing life.
Who are Fortunata and Jacinta in the novel?
Jacinta is Juanito Santa Cruz's cousin and wife, living in comfort after marriage and longing for a child. Fortunata is a poor, spirited woman from the market stalls whom Juanito once loved and left, and who later marries Maximiliano Rubín.
Why is Juanito Santa Cruz called the Delfín?
Delfín means Dauphin, the heir to a throne. The nickname shows that Juanito is the adored only son, the crown prince of his family, whom everyone indulges and whose wishes shape the household.
The author
Benito Pérez Galdós
1843–1920 · Spanish realist novelist
Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) was a Spanish novelist and playwright. He was born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and moved to Madrid in 1862. He wrote Marianela (1878), Fortunata and Jacinta (1886–1887), and Miau (1888), as well as the historical novel series Episodios nacionales. He died in Madrid.
More by Benito Pérez Galdós
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