political forces, Madrid elected Pérez Galdós as a representative in the Cortes of 1907. In 1909, together with Pablo Iglesias, he presided the Republican–Socialist Conjunction, although Pérez Galdós, who "did not feel himself a politician", soon withdrew from the struggles "for the minutes and the farce" and turned his already diminished energies to the novel and the theater. At the same time, the skillful political instinct of the Count of Romanones, plotted meetings between the young King Alfonso XIII and the popular writer that placed him in an ambiguous context. However, in 1914, Pérez Galdós, ill and blind, presented and won his candidacy as republican deputy for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This coincided with the promotion, in March 1914, of a National Board tribute to Pérez Galdós, made up of personalities as Eduardo Dato (head of the Government), the banker Gustavo Bauer (Rothschild's representative in Spain), Melquiades Álvarez, head of the reformists, or the Duke of Alba, as well as established writers such as Jacinto Benavente, Mariano de Cavia and José de Echegaray. Politicians such as Antonio Maura or Lerroux were not included in the board, neither were, for antagonistic reasons, the Church and the socialists. He had been blind since 1912, was in financial difficulties and increasingly troubled by illness. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for five years, 1912–16, which would both have increased his prestige outside Spain and improved his financial status, but neither was successful. Among those who nominated Pérez Galdós was the 1904 winner José Echegaray. So, the 1914 National Board was set up to raise money to help Pérez Galdós, to which the King and his Prime Minister Romanones were the first to subscribe. The activities of the Catholic press, which sneered at the writer as a blind beggar, along with the outbreak of World War I, led to the scheme being closed in 1916 with the money raised being less than half what would be required to clear his debts and set up a pension. In that same year, however, the Ministry of Public Instruction appointed him to take charge of the arrangements for the Cervantes tercentenary, for a stipend of 1000 pesetas per month. Although the event never took place, the stipend continued for the rest of Pérez Galdós’s life. In 1918, he joined in a protest with Miguel de Unamuno and Mariano de Cavia against the encroaching