Pituso en blackface: una mascarada racial en Fortunata y Jacinta

This article analyzes the function of blackface in the "falso Pituso" episode of Benito Pérez Galdós' Fortunata y Jacinta. The representation of the false heir of Spain's new dominant class serves as a point ofo departure for this paper's analysis of how the novel explores the significance of race at the end of the nineteenth century, on the eve of the loss of Spain's colonies, while also addressing its characterization of the bourgeoisie as white and European, its racilization of the working class and the poor (the Fourth Estate) and the problem of conceptualizing an ambiguous Spanish race.