During the early 19th Century in Spain, trouble with the Napoleonic occupation and Fernando VII's absolutist regime, thwarted all intellectual activity for several decades until in 1833, the monarch’s death triggered an outburst of the Romanticist movement, already in existence throughout the rest of Europe for some time.

Some of the most prominent romantic authors include Mariano José de Larra, Ángel de Saavedra, José de Espronceda, and José Zorrilla y Moral among others. The poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer composed some of the most well known Romantic poems in the Spanish language.

The Romantic movement in Spain awoke the nationalist feelings of certain Spanish regions, and ever since then Catalan, Galician and Basque literature has developed alongside the predominant Castilian literature.