Introduction

Summary

We are not prompted solely by the defining of our identities, but by their relation to everything possible as well – the mutual mutations generated by this interplay of relations …

(Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation 89)

This book explores how we might understand and represent Galicia and Galician writing in the world at a time when it might be argued that all writing exceeds national boundaries, and yet national models, especially in non-state cultures such as Galicia, remain as compelling as ever. Writing Galicia takes as its starting point Galicia's paradoxical position with regard to the outside world. On the one hand, it is a minority culture within Spain, its relations with the wider world mediated by a state within which Galicians make up just 6 per cent of the population. On the other hand, its long history of emigration means that in much of the world, especially but not only in Latin America, Galicia is the public face of Spain: today, more than 27 per cent of Spaniards registered overseas are Galicians. This paradox means that emigration has long played a central role in the Galician cultural and political imaginary. The intense connection that we see today between cultural representations of emigration and their political implications is unprecedented.