Adventure features prominently among his more popular tales, including Zalacaín el aventurero (1909; Zalacaín the Adventurer), César o nada (1910; Caesar or Nothing, 1919), and (Las inquietudes de Shanti Andia (1911; The Restlessness of Shanti Andia and Other Writings, 1959). While Baroja’s earliest works also contain elements of adventure, they focus as well on the characters’ social and economic milieu. The Quest, for example, presents a gritty and often brutal picture of urban life in working-class Madrid, as the novel’s main character, Manuel Alcázar, is buffeted by socio-economic forces beyond his control.
Spain after 1898. Spanish life in the early twentieth century was overshadowed by a national catastrophe at the very end of the nineteenth, when Spain suffered a humiliating military defeat by the United States and lost the remnants of its once mighty world empire. The actual fighting in the Spanish-American War lasted less than three months, from May to July 1898, but the decisive and one-sided outcome shocked the Spanish public and revealed the weakness of Spanish arms.
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