Presented here is the original autograph manuscript of La Fontana de Oro (The fountain of gold), the first novel by the great Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós (1843−1920). The manuscript dates from 1868; the novel was published in 1870. Galdós was a major literary figure in 19th century Spain, comparable in the scope and quality of his literary output to Charles Dickens in Great Britain and Honoré de Balzac in France. He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands archipelago of Spain, and lived most of his life in Madrid. La Fontana de Oro shows Galdós’s ability to observe and to capture in his fiction his vision of reality, which he went on to develop in Episodios Nacionales (National episodes), a series of 46 historical novels set in the period from the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) to Galdós’s own time. La Fontana de Oro deals with the character of Ferdinand VII (1784−1833), king of Spain in 1808 and from 1814 to 1833. This manuscript is in the collections of the Pérez Galdós House Museum, in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.