spirit, his love for history and his passion for the visual arts and literature. In 1862, after having completed his secondary studies, he travelled to Tenerife to obtain his certificate in Bachillerato in Arts. That same year he moved to Madrid to start his law degree, but he did not complete his studies. While studying at university, he frequented the Ateneo of Madrid and other gatherings of intellectuals and artists. Through them and his walks around the city, he became acquainted with the life in Madrid and witnessed the political and historical events of the time. These experiences were reflected in his journalistic works and in his first novels, The Golden Fountain Café (La Fontana de oro) (1870) and El audaz (1871). Career as a writer Benito Pérez Galdós led a comfortable life, living first with two of his sisters and then at the home of his nephew, José Hurtado de Mendoza. In the city, he got up at sunrise and wrote regularly until ten o'clock in the morning, in pencil, because he considered the use of a pen a waste of time. He would then go for walks in Madrid to eavesdrop on other people's conversations (hence the enormous freshness and variety of his dialogues) and to observe details for his novels. He did not drink, but he smoked leaf cigars incessantly. In the early afternoon he read in Spanish, English or French; he preferred the English, Castilian and Greek classics, particularly Shakespeare, Dickens, Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Euripides, whom he knew inside out. In his later years, he began to read Leo Tolstoy. Afterwards he would return to his walks, unless there was a concert, for he adored music and was a music critic for a long time. He went to bed early and almost never went to the theater. From Ramón Pérez de Ayala's point of view, Pérez Galdós was careless in his dress, using somber tones to go unnoticed. In winter it was common to see him wearing a white woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, with one end hanging from his chest and the other behind his back, a half-smoked cigar in his hand and, when seated, his German shepherd dog beside him completed the topical picture. He was in the habit of wearing his hair cropped "al rape" and, apparently, suffered from severe migraines. By 1865, he was publishing articles in La Nación