Trafalgar

This is the book that launched Galdos’s vast Episodios Nacionales, the novel cycle in which he retold nineteenth-century Spanish history through the eyes of ordinary people. The narrator is Gabriel de Araceli, an orphaned boy from Cadiz who enters the service of a retired naval officer and, in October 1805, finds himself aboard the mighty Santisima Trinidad at the Battle of Trafalgar. Galdos, writing in 1873, recreates the confusion, courage, and waste of the sea fight that shattered the combined Spanish and French fleets. What could have been dry history becomes vivid through a child’s astonished eyes and an old sailor’s pride. A brisk, moving opening to one of literature’s great historical projects, it is free to download as a PDF or EPUB.