From the perspective of contemporary images of the poor and attitudes towards poverty and charity, ‘Una visita al Cuarto Estado’ is one of the most significant and illustrative chapters in Fortunata y Jacinta. During the second half of the nineteenth century in Spain, the incipient process of industrialization and urbanization brought with it not only a change in the concepts of poverty and charity as they had been traditionally understood by the wealthier classes but also new ways of dealing with the needy. In particular, a new system of philanthropy gained ground over old charitable practices. To understand how new attitudes to poverty and, similarly, changed perceptions of the poor are reflected in ‘Una visita al Cuarto Estado’, it will be useful to analyse the historical context in which these developed.

From the 1830s, the liberal revolutionary process initiated a series of social transformations – including the dismantling of the guilds, proletarianization and increased migration from an impoverished countryside to the towns. The growing numbers of immigrants flocking to the cities exacerbated the long-standing problem of mendicity, especially in Madrid, whose industrial structures, still underdeveloped, were unable to absorb a rapidly expanding labour force. The widening gap existing between demographic and economic growth generated increasing numbers of unemployed, many of whom were forced into mendicity. Almost from the outset of industrialization, from about 1840, unemployment – or at best occasional employment – became a permanent feature of urban Spain. As a result, from mid-century onwards unemployment and mendicity became intimately associated, as street begging by the unemployed increased.

The problem of mendicity in Spain's larger cities not only renewed interest in the relatively narrow issue of poverty, it also sparked a broader concern for social stability. Poverty and other related issues, such as the insanitary living conditions of the poor, increasingly came to be viewed as a problem closely linked to the wider and more threatening ‘social question’. Social and economic change meant that the ancient perception of the destitute as ‘Christ's poor ones’ was gradually displaced by a more negative image. The poor became associated, especially in the last third of the century, with the emergence of mass, violent protest and with the new socialistic ideas that propounded a radical transformation of the existing order.