# Trafalgar — Character guide

> Key figures in Trafalgar by Benito Pérez Galdós.

- [Unknown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/narrator.md): He serves as page and companion in Don Alonso's household, moving between the parlor's quarrels and the gun deck's chaos with equal attention. His devotion to the old captain and to the glamorous young officers around hi
- [Don Alonso Gutierrez de Cisniega](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/don_alonso_gutierrez_de_cisniega.md): Don Alonso belongs to an old Vejer family and has spent a lifetime in the navy, from Havana to the Straits of Magellan, ending in defeat and slow promotion. His body is broken and his mind is fixed on the past, yet his s
- [Señor Marcial](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/senor_marcial.md): Marcial is the household's resident ancient mariner, intimate enough to walk into Don Alonso's room mid-argument and answer Doña Francisca's insults with cheerful impudence. He has lost limbs in Spain's wars and gained a
- [Doña Francisca](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/dona_francisca.md): Doña Francisca is a woman of noble birth and exemplary conduct whose temper has been honed by years of worry over a sailor's life. She tends Don Alonso with real devotion, but never in silence, and her tirades against Vi
- [Churruca](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/churruca.md): Churruca appears first as a guest at Doña Flora's, handsome and strong but marked by an intense sadness, and later as the subject of Malespina's harrowing account of the battle. He had voted against sailing, distrusted V
- [Don José Malespina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/don_jose_malespina.md): Malespina is distantly related to Don Alonso and engaged to Rosita, which makes him both a family intimate and a link to the wider war. He returns from the fleet with news of Churruca's death and the defeat, and his narr
- [Don Rafael Malespina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/don_rafael_malespina.md): Don Rafael Malespina is the son whose survival at Trafalgar becomes the emotional hinge of the novel's domestic scenes, lying wounded aboard the Rayo while his father Don José María storms the deck with tall tales. His f
- [Gravina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/gravina.md): Gravina commands the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, a gentleman and brave sailor whose merits the narrator judges to have been exaggerated by a grieving nation. Too much the courtier to show the immovable determination of a
- [Rosita](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/rosita.md): Rosita is the young woman at the center of the Cádiz household's emotional life, pale and hollow-eyed from the anguish of waiting for news from Trafalgar. When the page mistakenly announces Don Rafael's death, she faints
- [Flora de Cisniega](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/flora_de_cisniega.md): Doña Flora is the aging, richly dressed hostess whose drawing-room serves as the novel's clearinghouse for political rumor and naval enthusiasm, her patriotic fervor a substitute for the romance her fifty years deny her.
- [Lord Nelson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/lord_nelson.md): Nelson appears through Spanish eyes as the enemy genius who reads the allied line, sees its weakness, and cuts it in two — a maneuver the narrator's informants describe with reluctant awe even as they curse him. He is th
- [Villeneuve](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/villeneuve.md): Villeneuve is the French admiral under whose orders the combined fleet sails to its destruction, a distant authority whose choices the Spanish captains must obey even when they see disaster coming. His presence in the na
- [Alcalá Galiano](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/alcala_galiano.md): A Spanish naval commander killed at Trafalgar.
- [Napoleon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/napoleon.md): The French emperor, mentioned as a historical figure.
- [Don Francisco Xavier de Uriarte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/don_francisco_xavier_de_uriarte.md): A Spanish naval officer mentioned in the narrative.
- [Álava](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/alava.md): A Spanish naval officer present at Trafalgar.
- [Godoy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/godoy.md): The Spanish prime minister, mentioned politically.
- [Cisneros](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters/cisneros.md): A Spanish admiral commanding at Trafalgar.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/trafalgar_se/characters