Galicia occupies an ambiguous position, at the crossroads between land and sea, the Atlantic north and the Mediterranean south, Spanish and Portuguese. For two centuries, its nationhood was ignored or disputed and its people migrated in great numbers to the Americas. What it means to be Galician, therefore, is a central question--particularly now, given Galicia’s new autonomy and today’s trends of globalization and pluralism.

In this first English-language collection of analyses of Galician culture and identity, many aspects of galeguidade--Galicianness--are explored. Among them are the nineteenth-century Rexurdimento and Rosalía de Castro’s championing of and conflict with Galician nationalism, the status of Galician as a separate language, the attractions and problems of television series that express a utopian nostalgia, the continuing importance of Galician-language poetry and folk music, and challenges to Galician tradition by the postmodern avant-gardes after 1975.