Mariano José de Larra is the most popular writer from the Spanish Romantic Movement. Lieve Behiels examines his ideas on translation, how he applied these ideas to his own translations, and which role is played by the concepts of literality and verbality. Larra strongly believed that literature was part of the social order and that a literary text should be assessed by its emancipating function. Translators should therefore carefully select which works to translate. Comedies – which in Lara’s view play a critical role in society - should be adapted to the linguistic and social norms of the target audience. Tragedies deal with more universal facts and contain better-known characters. Translations of tragedies should therefore attempt to equal the style of the source text. Translating literally is altogether wrong, free translation is what should be aimed for. Larra applies his own ideas quite rigidly in his translations/adaptations.