Where is Benito Pérez Galdós?

Portrait of Benito Pérez Galdós.

Those who have children between 13 and 17 years old will have noticed that Benito Pérez Galdós has disappeared from the school curriculum. Students no longer study their work in the literature class and their name, in the best of cases, simply appears on a list of important writers.

Something that collides with a past not so past in our educational history. There was a time when all the students read, for example, some of the books belonging to the "National Episodes".

The aspiring nobel prize for literature not only captured in his work a wonderful chronicle of past events but, with a perfect Cervantine literary style, I create realistic novels worthy of placing him among the three best writers in the history of the Spanish language.

Anyway, no one reads his books anymore. In my opinion, this circumstance derives from an attempt at educational evolution towards a curricular modernity. Modernity is, away from the teaching content previously developed in schools.

This reform, necessary and positive in many aspects due to the evolution of our society, He has committed the terrible attempt to bypass Pérez Galdós. Ignoring him due to the absurd conception of his work as something anchored in the past or, even worse, something nationalistic close to fascism.

And I say the latter with knowledge of the facts since, on more than one occasion, many "illustrious" individuals have formulated such an unfortunate theory on the basis that, during the Franco years, "national episodes" did appear on the agenda of the students and their study was practically compulsory.

In this way and as it happens with many chapters of history, the youth of this country are being denied the existence of a wonderful writer and unique literary work. Increasing, in this way, the ignorance of our society and the forgetting of everything that deserves to be respected and valued.

So good sadly Benito Pérez Galdós depends on the misunderstood, arrogant and disarmed professor who, in an act of unprecedented madness, decides to go where the current agenda suits him and, as a champion of literature, he confronts the absurd by offering his students the book "Gerona", "Trafalgar", "Zaragoza", "Miau" or the masterpiece entitled "Fortunata y Jacinta".

Surprisingly, this is the only possibility that the Canarian writer is studied in Spain. Definitely,  a nonsense that in my opinion reflects, along with many other aspects, the problem that this country presents in educational matters.