86.2.colmeiro

Peripheral Visions, Global Positions: Remapping Galician CultureJos F. Colmeiro

The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Volume 86, Number 2, 2009,pp. 213-230 (Article)

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Peripheral Visions, Global Positions: Remapping Galician Culture

jos f. colmeiro

Michigan State University

AbstractThis essay synthesizes some of the most dramatic changes taking place in the Gali-cian cultural landscape and argues for a shift towards a postnational and interdis-ciplinary cultural studies approach based on a deterritorialization of the Galician cultural map, where the hitherto privileged institutional channels of cultural iden-tity language, literature, territory are set alongside new cultural formulations whose provenance and import are not only Galician but global. examining literary, cultural, musical and visual works emanating from Galicians around the world and from citizens of the world based in Galicia, the essay proposes an interpretation of Galician cultural production in which the peripheral is reimagined as central and the Galician as incontrovertibly global.

Resumeneste artigo sintetiza algns dos cambios mis dramticos que se estn a producir no panorama cultural galego e apunta a necesidade de mudar cara un enfoque postcolonial e interdisciplinar dentro do marco dos estudos culturais galegos. Dito marco estara baseado no que o autor denomina unha deterritorializacin do mapa cultural galego, onde as, polo de agora, privilexiadas canles institucionais da inden-tidade cultural lingua, literatura, territorio existen xunto con novas frmulas, cuxa orixe e relevancia non son s galegas, senn tamn globais. examinando os traballos literarios, culturais, musicais e visuais producidos tanto por galegas e galegos espallados polo mundo, como por artistas extranxeiros asentados en Galicia, colmeiro propn unha interpretacin da promocin cultural galega na que o peri-frico reimaxinado como central e o galego como indiscutiblemente global.

bhs, 86 (2009)Jos F. Colmeiro214

ser perifrico te sita en el centro del mundomanuel rivas

Today all cultures are border culturesNstor Garca canclini

in this essay i would like to present an overview of the remapping of contem-porary Galician culture and the challenges and opportunities it faces in a global twenty-first-century world. The transformation of the cultural landscape that has occurred in Galicia in the last few decades following the demise of francos dictatorship has been nothing less than dramatic. it has been characterized primarily by a remarkable if uneven cultural and political reawakening after a four-decade longa noite de pedra (long night of stone), the establishment of poli-tical self-government, rapid demographic urbanization and industrial reconver-sion, reversed migration patterns, and some significant advances towards gender parity and cultural and linguistic normalization. All these changes have taken place against the backdrop of a very rapidly evolving process of cultural hybridi-zation and readjustment to the new patterns of globalization.

The profound shifts that have occurred in Galicia and the world in the last decades dictate that we approach cultural production from new perspectives and conceptual models to produce an alternative cartography that is more inclusive and better reflects the new social realities. Beyond the nationalist and disciplinary criterio filolxico to use the expression coined by Xoan Gonzlez-milln which is still largely the norm in Galician studies, i propose to follow a postnational and interdisciplinary cultural studies approach, in line with the recent groundbreaking work of other Galician studies scholars in the Us and the UK (Bermdez, Gabilondo, Hooper, Romero) on issues of migration and transatlantic studies, more in sync with the hybrid complexities of contempo-rary cultural production. my theoretical perspective is particularly sensitive to the multiple interactions between the local and the global, and the creation of glocal realities in complex relations of interdependence and interpenetra-tion (Garca canclini 1995). This approach implies decentring language and Galician literary production as the privileged institutional channels of cultural identity, while still recognizing their crucial importance for Galician cultural identity, as a way around the overdetermined fatal junction of nation and culture in minority cultures and stateless nations such as Galicia (Gilroy 1993: 4). in my analysis i propose the deterritorialization of the Galician cultural map to overcome long-established exclusions based on gender, national origin, language or territorial demarcation, and the disjointing of the centre/periphery dichotomy that has relegated Galician culture to the margins. in essence, it is an attempt to address the perceived necessity of opening Galicia and Galician studies to the world.

bhs, 86 (2009) Peripheral Visions, Global Positions: Remapping Galician Culture 215

Remapping Galician culture

The Galicia of the twenty-first century is rapidly coming out to the world. It could be argued that in these last years Galicia has been coming out of a lot of adverse enclosures: coming out of the dictatorship, coming out of the legacy of cultural minifundio (fragmentation and atomization) and patriarchal caciquismo (provincial political corruption), and coming out of the periphery. in one way or another, Galicians have also been coming out of the nation for a long time, as migrants and exiles to the Americas or to Western europe, or sailing around the world and the seven seas, reimagining the nation from afar, and in the process opening themselves up to new forms of cultural hybridity.

in response to the great modern diasporas associated with globalization, Garca canclini has asked: cmo pensar una nacin que en gran medida est en otra parte? (2005: 52). This question is particularly relevant in the case of Galicia, which necessitates an alternative conceptual model of the nation. it is symp-tomatic that from Cuba came the modern symbols of Galicia, the flag, the coat of arms, and the national anthem, as well as books, periodicals, cultural insti-tutions and political ideas.1 And from the British Isles and Brittany have come modern models of peripheral nationalism and cultural resistance, such as the current celtic music revival, that have been instrumental in Galicias reclaiming of its cultural identity.2 likewise, myriad migrant and exilic Galician communi-ties have spread across europe, north and south, and across the Americas from montevideo to montreal.

in fact, Galicia has greatly expanded her horizons and created new communi-ties beyond the confines of the geopolitical borders of the nation, on a par with other major migrant european groups, such as the jewish and irish communi-ties. in the last century, the greatest urban concentrations of Galicians were found not in Galicia or spain but in the New World, in the metropolitan areas of Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana. And this is not simply confined to the past, since it has its own very perceptible legacy in the present. in the census of registered voters for spains general elections in march 2008, there were 325,000 registered Galicians living abroad, a 5.5 per cent increase since 2004.3 And in

1 The role of the transatlantic Galician migrant communities in the development of modern Galician cultural identity, and particularly the Galician community in cuba, is well known. one of the crucial books of the Galician Rexurdimento, rosala de castros Follas novas (1978 [1880]), was originally published in cuba by the Galician colony. The real Academia Galega was also founded in Havana during the exile of Curros Enrquez, and the emancipation ideals of Cuban nationalists also influenced Galician nationalism. See Axeitos (2006) and Bermdez (2002).

2 The idealized association of Galician cultural identity with celtic origins goes back to Pondal and the romantic movement. for an overview of the modern cultural reinvention of Galician celtic music as an assertive act of reclaiming a distinctive identity, see Toro (2002) and Romero (2006).

3 Between 2003 and 2007 there was only a 0.3 per cent growth in local Galician voters, but a 12.3 per cent growth in absentee voters (sampedro 2007). This increase, due to the new generations of post-migrant Galician descendants, is asymmetrical. The spectacular growth of registered Galicians in latin America has gone from two-thirds to about three-


2008, the percentage of absentee Galician voters from the total number of voters residing in Galicia (2,132,737) is 14 per cent, more than the whole province of Lugo or Ourense. That is why Buenos Aires has been commonly called Galicias fifth province. This situation is not merely a case of Galician magical realism, with the spectral reawakening of the dead to participate in the elections, but a present-day consequence of the great Galician diaspora. Most of the new influx is composed of post-migrants, second- and third-generation descendants of migrants and exiles who have reclaimed their ancestors nationality for personal, economic and political reasons, now that their spanish nationality is recognized and the Galician authorities facilitate their integration.4 for this reason, Galicia is one of the few countries in the world where the main political parties regu-larly campaign outside the nation, and candidates and representatives occupy billboards, tour the cities, have rallies and meet voters.5

That diasporic dimension is integral to modern Galician cultural identity, and its dynamic condition could potentially be a major advantage for its survival in our global age.6 openness and cultural hybridity, creative fusion, economic growth, social dynamism, global solidarity and interconnectedness are some of the positive values that could be recognized in this new horizon.7 i propose that

quarters of all absentee voters in only four years, most likely a result of the economic and political crisis experienced in their native countries. The situation is not the same in europe, where there has not been a similar increase. in fact, switzerland, a traditional centre of Galician migration, moved in 2008 from second to third position in number of Galicians, a place now occupied by Venezuela (see los emigrantes 2008).

4 The fraudulent conditions of the Galician migrant vote have been repeatedly exposed in the media, with the appearance of dead voters in the registry and a lack of security around voting procedures, in particular provision for ascertaining the true identity of the voters. Until very recently, not enough has been done to remedy this. See Baamonde (2008).

5 some recent examples of the echo in the Galician press of the political campaigning in latin America and europe reveal the real scope of this important post-migrant connec-tion: As, el presidente del PPdeG, Alberto Nez Feijo, viaj a Brasil a mediados del mes de enero, as como a Venezuela, mxico, Argentina y Uruguay en febrero. Tambin el dipu-tado en el congreso y cabeza de cartel del PP a la cmara baja por ourense, celso Delgado, se desplaz a suiza y Alemania y la nmero uno por la provincia de Pontevedra Ana Pastor estuvo en Nueva York [] Pese a ello, fuentes populares enmarcaron dentro de la normalidad estos viajes y destacaron que el propio feijo viaj al exterior con frecuencia desde que es presidente del PPdeG, hace dos aos, para conocer las necesidades de los emigrantes [] De igual modo, las diputadas del PsdeG marisol soneira y laura seara viajaron a los pases latinoamericanos con mayor nmero de emigrantes gallegos y visi-taron Venezuela, Brasil, Argentina y Uruguay entre el da 7 del pasado mes de enero y el 22 de este mismo mes. [] Pese a ello, fuentes socialistas opinan que la incidencia del voto emigrante en las generales depender de la participacin que, segn recordaron, nunca super el 33 por ciento (see Un total 2008). for another critical perspective on the Gali-cian overseas vote see also Hooper (2006), who also mentions the particular case of Haiti, where political campaigns are taken beyond the nation.

6 As Axeitos has noted (2006: 18), en gran parte, nos conformamos como pobo desde a extranxera e non desde a familiaridade dos horizontes coecidos (in a large measure, we were constituted as a nation from afar and not from familiarity with well-known hori-zons). All translations from Galician are my own.

7 obviously, there are also very problematic issues related to the process of economic and cultural globalization, such as the real dangers of homogenization, deracination and the


these visions from the periphery, coming out of the margins, can actually turn into advantageous positions on the new global map. As we know, peripheral visions have a wider range of vision, and therefore are more open to what is beyond the limiting confines of the centre. The locations of culture in the global age surpass the geopolitical limits of the nation. These peripheral visions are then turning into global positions, as we witness the establishment of a potential new paradigm that is both postnational and post-peripheral, one that we could label perhaps as The Galician Atlantic, appropriating Paul Gilroys concept of the transnational Black Atlantic diaspora (Gilroy, 1993), as Joseba Gabilondo has done for the Hispanic Atlantic (2001).

This remapping of Galician culture is, directly and indirectly, related to the political and cultural remapping of the nation-state since the transition to democracy in the 1970s, with the official recognition in the 1978 Constitution of spains multicultural and multilingual diversity, which has enabled the recu-peration and preservation of distinct sub-national cultural identities. This reali-zation is particularly significant in the contemporary context of the post-cold war remapping of europe and the concerns about the erosion of local cultures challenged by political and economic globalization. my working hypothesis is that this double cultural and political delineation has created both a need and an opportunity for redefining Galicias cultural identity in a wider cultural context exceeding traditional national and state parameters. The erosion of the tradi-tional nation-state paradigm, by both centrifugal (nationalist movements) and external forces (supranational globalization), has provided a fertile ground and a creative impetus to redefine Galician culture and identity beyond the limiting confines of the nation or the nation-state. This double bind has been redefined by some critics in Hispanic Studies as the postnational paradigm (Bermdez et al. 2001, Gabilondo 2002, Hooper 2005). And this is precisely, according to my thesis, the impetus that has allowed the modern cultural reawakening of Galicia. These apparently opposing cultural forces create new hybrid realities and new forms of identity that bind the old with the new, the local with the global. A new Galician culture has emerged that is neither urban nor rural, but rurban; neither national nor colonial, but postnational; neither simply authentic nor foreign, but profoundly hybrid, as the interaction of the local and the global has produced new post-peripheral glocal cultural forms that are transforming the inherited status quo.8 The following pages will provide various examples of this hybrid redefinition in contemporary Galician culture.9

reinstatement of world inequalities and asymmetries, but for the purposes of this essay i am more interested in the new forms of cultural hybridity and the strategic remapping that become possible in the new global order. for more on the negative aspects of global-ization, see Garca canclini (1995, 2005).

8 Garca Canclini (2005) adopts the neologism glocal, borrowed from the field of economics and social theory, to refer to those hybrid cultural realities resulting from the dynamic interplay of the local with the forces of global modernity.

9 i analyse the particular dynamics of the glocal and the rurban in relation to Galician rock brav in my forthcoming essay smells like Wild spirit (see colmeiro forthcoming, 2009).


Historically speaking: a postcolonial coming out

The study of contemporary Galicia can offer fascinating insights and potentially valuable lessons about the process of collective identity formation within a multicultural and multilingual context. likewise, it can enlighten us about the creative interactions of local cultures with global forces in a postcolonial twenty-first century. Galicia presents an interesting case study of the demarginalization of subaltern identities and the fragmentation of absolutist power and monolithic thinking associated with the trends of postmodernity, and the parallel demise of the old colonial empires and emergence of postcolonial discourses. The critique of modernity by postcolonial thinkers and subaltern studies scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Paul Gilroy and Gayatri Spivak has a peculiar inflection in the case of Galicia, where the nation has always been at the same time more than and less than a nation. Galicia has been simultaneously a nation negated by the state, and a nation overflowing the nation, marked by migration and deracination. This marginal and diasporic condition responds to the concept of DissemiNation, Homi Bhabhas metaphor for the modern postcolonial nation, which transfers (and transforms) the meaning of home. This process follows in the footsteps of Eric Hobsbawms history written from the margins, the history of the modern Western nation from the perspective of the nations margin and the migrants exile (Bhabha 2006: 200).

Galicia today is a stateless nation with its own particular cultural identity: it is one of only three officially recognized historical nationalities (with the Basque Country and Catalonia) in the 1978 Spanish Constitution; and one with its own language, Galician, which is one of the four co-official languages recog-nized in the spanish constitution. Galicia is also one of a handful of relative success stories in the contemporary Western world, a minority culture, long repressed and marginalized, which has resisted and grown despite all doom-laden predictions. it constitutes an exemplary case of the revitalization of a minority culture and language that has come dangerously close to disappearing, an achievement brought about not simply by returning to a mythical past but by hybridizing and embracing the new (new technologies, new media, new urban idioms) and engaging in a productive and creative dialogue between the local and the global.

The multicultural and multilingual diversity of spain has only been discov-ered and generally recognized in recent years, after the long period of polit-ical and cultural repression exercized by francos dictatorship, and the even longer five centuries of Castilian domination. As some cultural theorists have remarked, empires begin at home: The building of empire is first an internal process with internalized others (macKenzie 1995: 35). from this perspective, it could be argued that the formation of the spanish empire actually began with the domination of conflicting internal others such as Galicia what Alfonso castelao named, following Zurita, the chronicler of the catholic monarchs, the doma y castracin de Galicia (1996: 47). It is also true that the collapse of the imperial edifice often follows the inverse order of its construction, something


that ortega y Gasset already observed in Espaa invertebrada (1922). This is clearly the case of the spanish empire, with the progressive fragmentation of the old empire through the nineteenth century and then the vanishing of its latter-day vestiges in the twentieth, coinciding with the disappearance of the neo-imperial Fascist ideology of Francoism. Thus, 1975 marks the official end of Spanish neo-imperialism in Africa, with the transference of Western sahara, as well as the end of fascist rule at home.10 As a result, the internalized colonies within the nation-state (Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country) were the last ones to obtain their autonomy from the central power during the democratic transition after the 1978 constitution. from a postcolonial theoretical framework we could argue, then, that Galicia was one of the first colonies of the Spanish empire, paving the way for the conquest of the new world overseas, and also its last, with the approval of the statute of Autonomy in 1981 and the return of self-governance.11

The history of this spanish colonization has had a huge impact on the devel-opment of Galician culture through the centuries and has been marked by domi-nation and subjugation. The old medieval kingdom of Galicia was incorporated into the crowns of leon and castile in the early modern period, which led to a long period of political, economic and cultural neglect. Galicia experienced a continuing decline after its cultural height in the middle Ages, when Gali-cian-Portuguese was the main poetic language of the iberian Peninsula, and the pilgrim route to santiago de compostela traversed the european continent, thus forming the cultural nervous system of medieval christendom Goethe has been quoted as saying: The idea of europe was born along the road to santiago (roseman 2004: 78). Galicias long period of neglect and decline, with the tacit complicity of the Galician nobility, lasted four centuries until the intellectual regeneration that started with the nineteenth-century Rexurdimento (Galician revival) in line with the Spanish (Basque, Catalan) and other European nation-alist movements (the irish among others), and continued through the 1930s. of course, this cultural and political revival was cut short by the spanish civil War (193639) and the four decades of repression and obscurity that followed. Because of these circumstances, massive migration of the poor and subaltern classes to the Americas, and after the war to Western europe, has characterized

10 spanish rule over northern morocco and equatorial Guinea also collapsed under franco in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. The enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla and surrounding islands, regularly contested by morocco, are the only exceptions to the end of spanish rule in Africa.

11 i am aware of the inexactitude and anachronism inherent in using the term colony to refer to the particularities of the historical nationalities within the spanish nation-state. However, the historical situation of Galicia shares many of the attributes of colonial oppression and political and cultural dependence, something that has been argued by many leftist Galician nationalists (X. L. Beiras, X. L. Mndez Ferrn) since the 1960s and the emergence of anti-colonialist emancipation movements in the Third World. i have used this formulation in my article on postcolonial detection in spain (2001). The postcolonial perspective has been argued also for the case of the British nation-state and its peripheral nations (scotish and irish in reizbaum 1992, Welsh in Aaron and Williams 2005).


the modern history of Galicia. With the transition to democracy in spain in the 1970s, the return to self-government and the entry into the european Union in the 1980s, Galicia underwent a process of rapid transformation, reclaiming polit-ical autonomy, cultural and linguistic normalization, and economic develop-ment without historical parallel. This regained confidence in its cultural identity and autonomy has offered opportunities for coming out of the colonial mould of the centralist nation-state.

But also, Galicia is more than a nation, if a nation is traditionally defined in essentialist terms according to a monocultural mould and a clearly defined geopolitical space. As we noted before, Galicia has been a nation of migrants, dispersed around the globe, which has persistently expanded its horizons beyond the confines of the nationalistic definition of a Nosa Terra (literally our land, essentially a geographic description of the motherland). in recent years, Galicia has experienced a reverse phenomenon, becoming the destination of many migrants from overseas, much as in other parts of spain after the country joined the european Union in the mid-1980s. in Galicias case, this phenomenon has also had particular inflections, since a large number of the new migrants have come from areas with direct historic, cultural and linguistic links, even with close family connections through the Galician Atlantic diaspora, such as latin America and the lusophone world.12 This new situation, which inverts the Galician migration paradigm but reinforces the Atlantic orientation of Galicia, necessarily involves a more inclusive redefinition of the nation, presenting new challenges, but also new opportunities for growth and cultural hybridity.

Coming out of the periphery

Like other cultural identity filters (race, gender, class), Galician identity involves a particular way of perceiving reality and of interacting with the world, inflected by its history and geopolitical situation on the margins of the nation-state. What i would like to argue, however, is that Galicias historically peripheral condi-tion has paradoxically facilitated its transition to the global condition. Galicians are geopolitically positioned away from the centre of the nation-state, at the margins of the centre but also beyond its confining boundaries and, therefore, are freer to experiment with alternatives, and more open to movement and enga-gement with the outside world in europe and the Americas, and beyond. This peripheral double position, inside and outside, also suggests a wider angle of vision, a supplementary vision that augments and enriches the narrow angle from the centre, as the following examples will illustrate.

As the traditional lands end (finis terrae) of the european continent, Galicia is positioned at a double geographical periphery, at the farthest point in the peninsula from the centre of the nation-state and from the centre of political and

12 Portugal is still the origin of the largest number of migrants coming to Galicia, followed by Latin America, particularly Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, traditional receptors of Galician migration (Izquierdo 2004, Bouzada fernndez and lage Picos 2004).


economic power in europe. Yet, on the other hand, Galicias Atlantic position has also meant that it is closer to other peripheral finisterres and to the Americas, a transatlantic dimension of Galician culture that transcends geographical limita-tions and geopolitical national borders. This gravitational pull away from the centre and reorientation towards other nations has made possible the formation of other connections and alternative centres beyond the confines of its territory.13 Peripheral positions can thus lead to global visions. Galicias physical position on the periphery has also frequently found a parallel in the political, socio-economic and cultural realms, since in modern history Galicia has traditionally been dominated by hegemonic groups subservient to the nation-state (Beiras 1973; Gemie 2006). Galicias peripheral condition (geopolitical and economic) was the key factor that opened the floodgates to massive migration, first to the new world in the nine-teenth century, and later to northern europe in the mid-twentieth century.

As a result, Galicians probably have a more direct connection to the outside world than any other group in spain, since even today there are very large numbers of Galicians living outside Galicia (estimated at between 1.5 and 2 million).14 This global connectedness has meant, for example, that Havana or Buenos Aires have a direct and familiar immediacy for most Galicians that is not shared by other Spaniards, or Europeans in general, and this is reflected politically, economically, demographically and culturally. in that sense, their peripheral positions have meant much wider global visions.15 migration, uprootedness, transculturation, and nostalgic saudade are Atlantic themes that permeate Galician culture, having an enormous influence on its literature, music and visual arts, and are a large part of Galician cultural hybridity. Attesting to this reality we encounter novels and stories such as A man dos paos (The Migrants Hand, 2000) by manuel rivas, or Tres trebns (Three Thunders, 2005) by Xurxo Souto, films such as Mamasuncin (1984), Gallego (1987), Sempre Xonxa (1989), or Hotel Tvoli (2008), the tangos, corridos and caribbean rhythms of the Galician diaspora and its eternal return (the haba-neiras and tangos from marful, the conga santiaguesa from carlos Nezs Para Vigo me voy, or the transatlantic album Saudade, by luar na lubre with Pablo milans, lila Downs, and Adriana Varela, and so many others).

even today, when traditional migration patterns have reversed and Galicia

13 Galicia has a rich history of cultural and economic exchanges that are not subsidiary to the structures of the nation-state, from direct transatlantic relations with latin America to the establishment of world fishing enterprises, to the new global phenomenon of Zara. it would not be redundant here to reiterate the important migrant dimension of Galicia, as well as its direct cultural links with other european peripheries, through, for example, the celtic music network of festivals and performers, or the utilization of its peripheral status as Europes mythical lands end with the modern cultural redefinition of the road to santiago (see roseman 2004).

14 for more information see the website of the instituto Galego de Anlise e Documentacin internacional (http://www.igadi.org/index.html) and the article by Debora campos (2005).

15 sharif Gemie has commented that as a result of the massive migration of Galicians to the new world, Galicia was experiencing an early form of globalization: its people were learning to think in a bigger world. stretching out beyond their region, which was shaped by international forces (2006: 52).


is now the recipient of migrant workers from eastern europe, Africa and latin America (sometimes the grandsons and granddaughters of former Galician migrants), this Galician mobility has not stopped, and still today Galician workers travel around the globe alongside the new migrants in the new world economy, from the seychelles to south Africa. manuel rivas and Xurxo souto have written extensively about the enormous challenges, life-changing experiences and inter-cultural exchanges of this working community, which signal a move from the Atlantic to the global.16 A clear example of this new paradigm is the fact that Galician traditional cofradas of fishermen and sailors, who form the second largest fleet and second largest fishing industry in the world after Japan, now regularly employ large numbers of African and latin American migrant workers who have relocated to Galicia. As an example of this transnational hybridity, Batuko Tabanca, the female choir of batucadeiras consisting of the wives and mothers of Cabo Verdean sailors stationed in the Galician fishing port of Burela (with a cabo Verdean colony of some 500 people in the last decades) are now a definitive part of the Galician music scene, regularly appearing in the mass media and performing their songs across Galicia.17

it is clear that Galicias peripheral condition has profoundly marked its cultural identity, to the extent that in many significant ways Galicias imag-inary has more in common with ireland, the other traditional lands end of Europe at the periphery of Europe and the British Isles, than with most of the rest of spain (celtic music, folklore and mythology, landscape and climate, isolated location, minority autochthonous language, colonial history of subju-gation to the nation-state, population dispersion and massive diaspora). Not

16 This redirection towards the global is manifest in the Revista Brav (main press outlet of the 1990s rurban movemento brav), which dedicated its third issue to this topic in 1998 (7 portas, 7 mares). in Xurxo soutos essay Galicia-capetn, with its reference to the popular renaming by Galician sailors of cape Town as capetn and Antwerp as Antu-erpe, he remaps Galicia according to outra xeografa (another geography), which is post-peripheral and indeed global: Galicia unha rocha cativa chantada no Atlntico e tamn un inmenso pas marino que abrangue todos os ocanos... reclamamos para o brav o pas invisible do mar Non hai lmites nin fronteiras. existimos entre a realidade e o misterio. o fucio no ocano, a porta de todos os camios Desde a hiper-periferia cara capetn (souto 1998: 73), (Galicia is a small rock stuck in the Atlantic and also an immense sea country encompassing all the oceansWe claim for the brav people the invisible country of the sea There are no limits or frontiers. We exist between reality and mistery. our snouts in the ocean, the gate of all roads from the hyper-periphery towards capetn). one of the albums Xurxo souto recorded with os Diplomticos de monte-alto was precisely titled capetn. for more on the brav movement see colmeiro (forthcoming, 2009).

17 The integration of Batuko Tabanca into the Galician musical scene is particularly revealing of this cultural hybridization. They have appeared in the brav rock band album by os Diplomticos de monte-alto, Kmunikand (2003), and the Televisin de Galicia programme Alal, which specializes in Galician traditional music, devoted one full programme to them (see Alal 2007). Batuko Tabanca are produced by Galician musician and singer Uxa, a raiana product of the Galician-Portuguese border culture and an active advocate of the reunion of lusophone musics (from Galicia, Portugal, Azores, cabo Verde, mozambique, Angola and Brazil) through her own work as singer, but also as producer of albums, concerts, and radio and television shows.


surprisingly, Galician musicians have in the last decades started exploring their common celtic roots and experimenting with fusion with other forms of world music (such as latin and African music), thus profoundly renovating traditional Galician music through hybridization. As a result, a booming celtic neo-folk music revival movement has grown up in Galicia, with international festivals, concerts and music conservatoires. Today, some of the best celtic music produced in the world comes from Galicia, and some of its musicians such as milladoiro, carlos Nez, susana seivane, mercedes Pen, and luar na lubre are inter-nationally known as composers, ethnomusicologists, experimental artists and virtuoso performers. on the other side, alternative writer-musician, and now film director and producer, Antn Reixa, has opted for the revolutionary hybrid mixing of dance grooves and hip hop beats with traditional celtic bagpipes, or Galician folk rhythms with electronic instrumentation, over agitprop-like lyrics of urban disaffection and political activism, becoming a national cult figure and mass media persona.18

it is my belief that these peripheral visions, opened to the world, and fully aware of their gravitation in a global orbit, have enabled contemporary Galician artists and authors to resist marginalization or assimilation and come out with strong original voices, relying on the large arsenal of a rich ancestral culture, but renovated and immersed in the new global currents, thus claiming a post-peripheral, global position.

Galicia in the global world: beyond/coming out of the local

Galicia est en el centro. en los siglos XiX y XX ramos periferia,

pero en el mundo global ya no existen periferias jos ramn Garca

Galician contemporary culture is fundamentally redefined as a post culture: first, post-Franco; then, paradoxically, both post-industrial and post-rural (or rurban); also, postcolonial (profoundly marked by the experiences of colonialism and migration, but also struggling for its own identity and survival vis--vis the imperialistic legacy of the centralist spanish nation-state); and ultimately post-national and post-peripheral (beyond the nation and immersed in the global economic and geopolitical order). The remapping of cultural boundaries in Galicia beyond the strict confines of the nation-state corresponds to the postnational paradigm characterized by the erosion of the nation-state and the emergence of new realities that signal the hybridization of traditional peripheral cultures with global forces.

18 Antn Reixa was the leader of the well-known rock band Os Resentidos, the first modern group to use exclusively Galician in their lyrics. Their postmodern protest song Galicia canbal (fai un sol de carallo), which mixed the rhythm of muieiras and the sound of gaitas with electronic dance beats, became one of the most celebrated songs from the movida galega in Spain in the 1980s (with different mixes in English and Basque).


The intimate relation between the local and the global is quite palpable in Galicia today and is redefining its traditional peripheral status.19 The world-wide phenomenon of ZArA would be one of the more obvious examples of this trend.20 Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the postmodern trans-formation of santiago de compostela, the historic spiritual and cultural capital of Galicia, and perhaps the ultimate signifier of Galicianness, into a veritable medieval theme park for the benefit of pilgrims, returning migrants, business visitors and tourists. it is visited each year by several million people from all around the world.21 The cultural, and now also political and tourist capital of this new Galicia, Santiago has redefined its role as a hybrid of old and new, mixing the enxebre (traditionally Galician) and the global, folkloric gaiteiros (bagpipers) and pandeireteiras (tambourine players) and light-and-sound mega-concerts. This is a city of medieval tunas, xacobeos (pilgrimages) and world conferences, rural zoquios de madeira (wooden clogs) next to ZArA, ancestral queixos de tetilla and tartas de santiago (Galician cheese and almond cakes) next to souvenirs made in china, ancient architecture and postmodern global starquitects mestre mateo next to lvaro siza, Peter eisenmann and Norman foster. All consumable culture is found within the small perimeter of the city, whose mystical ancient town is today surrounded by a colossal, overpowering ring of new highways. Altogether, it constitutes a perfect metaphor for the new glocal Galicia.

The Galician cultural industry has also profited from this glocal transfor-mation in the form of a blossoming tourist economy and the export of cultural products, such as the booming Galician neo-traditional popular music and its successful insertion into celtic world music, the production of cultural guides and books, the export of multimedia, audiovisual and television productions with satellite transmission covering europe and the Americas, and internet broadcasting around the globe. The recent starring role of Galician culture at Havanas International Book Fair (2008), the first time a stateless nation has been invited as honorary guest, and the institutional and artistic representation of Galician music for the first time at the 2007 International Midem Festival (the most important international music trade show in the world), are other indica-

19 Significant in this regard is the statement by successful Galician entrepreneur Jos Ramn Garca: Galicia est en el centro. en los siglos XiX y XX ramos periferia, pero en el mundo global ya no existen periferias. internet es una gran autopista, adems el mercado es global, no importa el punto del que partamos (Blanco 2008). Garca is co-founder of Blusens, a booming santiago-based manufacturer of international leading-edge technologies (mP3, GPs, TVlcD), with manufacturing plants outsourced in china.

20 ZArA is a textbook case of supply chain management. it is also one of the featured compa-nies in Thomas l. friedmans bestseller The World is Flat (friedman 2007: 154). This global phenomenon has transformed the local reality of Arteixo, ZArAs main production centre, now a booming multicultural enclave. As Alejandro Bolaos has stated (2008), la multi-culturalidad es una rutina: en su sede central de Arteixo (A corua) hay empleados de ms de 30 pases.

21 for more on this cultural transformation see Gmez-montero (2001) and roseman (2004).


tions of the potential projection of Galician cultural productions beyond the confines of the nation.22

Within this same glocal frame, one of the latest cultural developments in santiago de compostela, and the subject of continued public controversy, has been the project of the Cidade da Cultura. Without a doubt one of the hot topics in Galician culture today, it underlines the key relationship between creative cultural producers and cultural and political institutions in contemporary Galicia. The project of the Cidade da Cultura, originally planned by the former Partido Popular government, could be interpreted as an attempt to create a Galician version, certainly of gargantuan proportions, of the project commissioned from frank Gehry by the Basque government, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The tran-snational dimension of this project, branded by an American cultural institution and signed by an American starquitect, with funding from the Official Basque Government, highlights the trend of creating spectacular cultural projects for global consumption, whose origins may be found in the national but whose reali-zation is indeed glocal. Two American cultural brands, Guggenheim and Gehry, carried out a postmodern intervention in the post-industrial urban wasteland of Bilbao, a controversial project that ultimately transformed the city and placed it on the postnational map for global consumption.23 In both cases, in Bilbao and santiago, we encounter spectacular postmodern buildings by one of the leading starquitects in the world (frank Gerhy and Norman foster), publicly funded by one of the historical autonomous communities with the aim of promoting its global image. in both cases, the impact of the building as packaging is much more important than the actual contents of the package. The Guggenheim in Bilbao does not have an important permanent collection, and what the Cidade da Cultura will hold is still unknown, so that the two institutions perhaps create their own metaphors of the void generated by the postmodern culture of simu-lacra. Nobody knows what the Basque or Galician component of these projects really is, other than their location.

Nevertheless, the comparison between both projects ends there. santiago is not a decaying post-industrial area, virtually unknown in the world. it already has a long, well-established presence in history and is a cultural and tourist world destination in itself. The new project, however, is on the periphery of the city and is five times the size of the Guggenheim, this in a considerably smaller city with a much smaller budget.

Needless to say, there has been a great degree of opposition to the project

22 These are not without public controversy. The representation in cuba, understood as an endorsement of the regime by some and as a costly self-publicity stunt by others, has been the subject of constant attack in the media, particularly by the PP opposition when these events coincided with the general election campaign. The costs associated with the Book Fair totalled 1.3 million euros and brought 150 Galician cultural figures to the event. For a report on the Fair and the response of Galician Conselleira de Cultura nxela Bugallo, see Daniel salgado (2008).

23 There has been a great deal of controversy on the subject of the Bilbao Guggenheim museum. for an overview of the topic, see Guasch and Zulaika (2005).


of the Cidade da Cultura, in part for ideological reasons since it was a legacy of the former Partido Popular government and a direct product of the megaloma-niac vision of its autocratic leader, and former minister under franco, manuel Fraga. The change of heart of the new bipartite government PSdG-BNG, which has finally endorsed the project and continued with construction after being vehemently against it while in opposition, has only further heated the debate. Above and beyond political reasons, the widespread resistance to the project today is largely articulated on conceptual and economic grounds. critics have pointed out its gigantic scale, which is out of place for a small-sized city like santiago de compostela, the fact that it is removed from the city centre a periphery of the periphery and the budgetary implications of building, main-taining and operating such an enormous public project, which undoubtedly would diminish official subsidies for other cultural projects. While the long-term effects are unknown, the huge costs are certain and any cultural and economic benefit remains to be seen. Whether it will be another successful Guggenheim or another massive catastrophe like the Prestige oil spill in 2002, its success will ulti-mately be determined by its ability both to connect in vital ways with the local population and to attract foreign visitors, that is, its success in becoming a well-integrated glocal reality. for that to happen, a new vision is needed to overcome the peripheral blindness that launched the project, which was autocratic and neo-liberal in nature, seduced by its immediate political benefits and blind to its long-term effects. A new creative peripheral vision must be transformed into a sustainable and singular position on the global map.

An important interplay of the local and the global has manifested itself some-times in the most dramatic and tragic ways. such was the case in November 2002, when the Prestige oil tanker, a substandard ship from liberia chartered by a european company, released 70,000 tonnes of fuel oil into the ocean and polluted hundreds of kilometres of Galician coast and sea bed. This was one of the biggest environmental disasters in modern history (bigger than the Exxon Valdez). The spill affected all the main resources of the region, with devastating consequences for the ecology and the economy, particularly agriculture, tourism and the crucial fishing industry (the worlds second largest fleet). The sponta-neous popular mobilization was also a glocal cultural phenomenon. The new grassroots organization Nunca mis (Never Again), an umbrella organization for myriad collectives and groups, was formed in response to the catastrophe and grew very rapidly. Thousands of individuals and members of non-govern-mental organizations from Galicia, spain and many other european countries volunteered in the massive clean-up effort, participated in rallies to mobilize the complacent authorities, to gather international support, and to make the international shipping regulations more ecology-friendly (i.e., by banning single-hulled tankers). Galician cultural figures responded just as vigorously and took charge of the popular movement, in light of the blindness of politicians and their incapacity to deal effectively with the emergency.

The voice of the popular movement was not a politician, a party leader, or a


professional civic organizer but a well-known female singer by the name of Uxa, the former lead singer of the folk band Na la, who travelled around Galicia, spain and europe to mobilize support for the cause. Writers wrote in newspapers and spoke in the media; singers and musicians organized concerts and published CDs as fund-raising activities; film-makers and audiovisual producers made documentaries that travelled throughout the world. They organized a popular response denouncing the negligence of the authorities, demanding reparations and responsibilities. The collective effort revealed a new form of solidarity and popular resistance that crossed national borders, and the possibility of changing the status quo. in this sense, the massive mobilization in Galicia offered a good example not only of how the global directly impacts the local but also vice versa, how the local can influence the global. We could say, then, in a double paradox, that a peripheral position demands a global vision, just as much as a peripheral vision implies its own positioning globally.

several key cultural areas represent this new creative hybridity in Galicia, one that goes beyond the confines of the national; it is particularly visible in the literary, musical and audiovisual areas. This is certainly the case of the rurban and glocal literature of manuel rivas and suso de Toro, the most widely trans-lated and successful of contemporary authors writing in Galician, and of the transnational queer approach of Teresa moure (Herba Moura, 2005; Benquerida catstrofe, 2007) and Antn lopo (Ganga, 2001) in their exploration of alterna-tive sexualities and gender identities across national borders. Perhaps even more ground-breaking is the emergence of new non-national authors such as Vctor omgb, the cameroonian immigrant writer in Galicia who wrote his testimonial autobiography Calella sen sada (originally in french), or ern moure, the experi-mental canadian poet laureate of third-generation Galician background, who has written in a hybrid english/Galician-Portuguese transnational lyric language, her works having titles such as Little Theatres (teatrios), or O Cadoiro, poems.

in the area of popular roots music and neo-folk music, Galician musicians and singers have already established themselves firmly in the world arena. In fact, the only two forms of roots music originating in spain that have success-fully been exported abroad in significant numbers are the ones that have been able creatively to hybridize their strong cultural heritage with new world music trends. One is flamenco with African and Latin American rhythms, and the other is Galician folk, hybridizing with celtic music and other forms of world music.24 The growing presence of foreign migrants in Galicia has also translated to the musical scene, where it is not strange to see foreign performers adapting to Galician culture (Batuko Tabanca) and hybrid bands of rock, reggae, rap and folk with members from Galicia, Senegal, Angola, or Tunisia (Pato 2006).

24 The list here is long, Milladoiro, Berrogetto, Na La, Uxa, Carlos Nez, Luar na Lubre, mercedes Pen, cristina Pato and susana seivane among others, but we could also include the irish band The chieftains,with their Grammy-winning and Galician-inspired album Santiago, or the Belgian-Galician folk groups such as the female ensemble of pandeireteiras called ialma (Marmuladas, Nova era), or the folk band camaxe (Imaxes), who have introduced the Galician pandeireta into the repertoire of Belgian folk bands.


Another area of great interest in this regard are the visual arts and the so-called boom of the Galician audiovisual sector, with animation, multimedia, televi-sion and state-national and transnational film co-productions made in Galicia or out of Galicia.25 multimedia artists such as Antn reixa, graphic artist, painter and film director Miguelanxo Prado, and Menchu Lamas are good examples of this new cultural hybridity.

These cultural agents and creators have been instrumental in the process of redefinition of Galician cultural identity, opening up to the world in the post-modern global age. They have been able to transcend both cultural essentialism and homogeneous uniformity by successfully incorporating the global in the local and by simultaneously inscribing their Galicianness in the global arena. The emergence of these creative artists, writers and cultural performers with powerful and diverse voices is redefining what Galicia is, or could be, in this postmodern, postnational and post-peripheral environment. The new Galician cultural production (particularly the more traditionally consumable forms of culture such as literature, music and the visual arts) should then be understood in relation to its repositioning on the global map, and to the process of construc-tion of a new Galician cultural identity, post-franco and postmodern, a/part of/from spain, and fully immersed in the new global currents.

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