Galdos was the tenth son of a colonel in the army, Sebastian Perez, Dolores and Galdos. In 1852 was admitted in the Colegio de San Agustin, which implemented a pedagogy very advanced for its time. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1862 at the Institute of La Laguna, and began to publish satirical poems, essays and stories in the local press. In September 1862 Galdos moved to Madrid. There he met the founder of the Free Institution of Education, Francisco Giner de los Rios, who encouraged him to write and introduced him to the krausismo. By then he frequent the theaters of Madrid and organized the «Tertulia Canaria.» In 1865 he began writing in newspapers La Nacion and El Debate, and the Journal of Intellectual Movement in Europe. By 1867 he made his first trip abroad as a correspondent in Paris World Expo. Galdos published in 1870 La Fontana de Oro, his first novel. The Shadow was published in November 1870 for delivery in La Revista de Espana. And in 1873 began to publish his masterpiece, the episodes, where these reflect the intimate life of the Spanish nineteenth century. The book has forty-six episodes in five series of ten novels each, except the last, unfinished. They begin with the Battle of Trafalgar and end with the Bourbon restoration in Spain. Galdos died at his home in the street Hilarion Eslava in Madrid on January 4, 1920.