Galicia, A Sentimental Nation

This is the first feminist and postcolonial analysis of Galician cultural nationalism and its relation to the Spanish state and Spanish centralism.

Galicia, a non-state nation in north-west Spain, has often been portrayed as a sentimental nation, a misty land of poets and legends. This book offers the first study of this trope as a feminizing, colonial stereotype that has marked Galician cultural history since the late nineteenth century. Through a close reading of the main texts of Galician literary history, the author shows how this trope has helped sustain the unequal power relation between Galicia and the Spanish State. As a consequence, questions of masculinity, morality and respectability have played an essential role in Galicia's national construction, thereby enforcing a masculine definition and limiting the role of women. This book argues for a revision of the main texts of Galician cultural nationalism through a gender and postcolonial perspective, showing that contemporary portrayals of Galician history are dependent on the politically debilitating trope of Galician sentimentality.