**4. Discussion**

## *4.1. Galicians in America: Transnational Lives*

In order to understand why many Galician-Americans of multiple generations make routine and frequent visits to the homeland and how they construct a Galician identity, it is first necessary to understand how they construct transnational lives in the US. Participants reflected on how in the past, there existed very insular communities of Galicians in New York. However, today, Galicians from the areas studied in this paper, while mostly still in New York, are much more widely dispersed and less unified than before. Therefore, transnational life is largely constructed not through a social field but rather through individualized household activities. This includes activities, such as cooking traditional dishes, watching Galician or Spanish television programs, following the news from Galicia, video chats with family and friends back home, celebrating holidays, and of course speaking in or utilizing to some extent both Spanish and Galician languages.

Participants described how, at certain times, they create an inflated focus on their Galician identity in the household environment, but it is not always consistent and definitely not always easy. This obsession to make all things at home Galician often pops up for these participants in discussions around instilling a Galician identity and knowledge of Galician culture in their children. One participant (011) born in the US, reminisced on this approach of crafting an exaggerated Galician household when her kids were growing up:

"Oh of course we grew up with [Galician] foods, [ ... ] Yeah all these ethnic dishes. They grew up with uh, my son used to say that I was too ethnic, that son over there [ ... ] he accused me one day of, 'Mom you're too ethnic'. That's how ethnic I was."

Participants recalled how they were raised with traditional Galician dishes and culture, and therefore worked hard to pass that along to their children. Other participants described how they knew they would create a more Galician household with their children in the future to make sure that their children had as much of the same knowledge of Galicia they grew up with. This cycle of a waxing and waning emphasis on Galician culture in households reflects themes within the literature on transnationalism that argues that assimilation and transnationalism are not always forces acted on migrants but rather are something migrants actively move back and forth between. For Smith (2006), it is not that migrants assimilate in some areas and not in others, but that transnational life can instead be understood in relation to many di fferent factors that are not always consistent and can change throughout the life course. There are times in the banality of daily life when participants actively "choose the nation" and moments when they do not (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008).

Choosing Galicia within the household, however, is not easy. Spanish and Galician television stations often require an extra subscription and can be expensive. Navigating time di fferences and busy schedules for family conversations through video chats means that interaction with those living in Galicia is not as frequent as many would desire. However, for participants, the most di fficult labor involved in constructing transnational households came from maintaining Spanish or Galician languages in the house and also sourcing/consuming authentic ingredients.

While the history of emigration and large number of Galician emigrants has made a significant impact on these communities in Galicia, Galicians in the US are a comparatively very small immigrant group. While there historically used to be more stores to consume products from Galicia and engage in social encounters (Pérez 2008), now participants make do with visiting Spanish, Portuguese, or French stores. One participant whose father is from Galicia and mother is Greek makes the point that in terms of migrants in the US, Spaniards as a whole are not a very large group, making choices to engage with Spanish heritage active and taking some amount of e ffort:

"[ ... ] there is also a bigger Greek community in New York than there is a Spanish one. Um so while I love my Spanish background as well it's a little harder to be immersed in it than it is in my Greek one." (009)

The small Galician immigrant groups also makes it di fficult to create transnational lives outside of the household. However, transnational public spaces and life still occurs, especially in New York. There is a club for Galicians in New York called Casa Galicia (Galicia House), where many social activities, classes, and other functions take place along with having a restaurant that serves Galician food. Some participants in the New York area remember how, for their family, Casa Galicia was the hub of social life growing up. Participants created childhood friends in Casa Galicia that they see both in New York and on visits back to Galicia, and some even met their spouses at Casa Galicia. However, outside Casa Galicia, and specifically for participants not in New York, discussions of transnational life were often dominated by stories of the vast amount of labor involved in needing to explain their heritage to the wider society.

Maintaining the Spanish or Galician language for participants throughout the generations is a topic that also reflects the work and di fficult choices in balancing between maintaining Galician ties and 'assimilating' to the US. Many interviewees express being torn between raising their children to speak Spanish and/or Galician or making sure they were prepared when they went to school in English. Interview 004 was one of the only interviewees that did not immigrate to New York at some point in her migratory trajectory, though she does have family there. She acknowledges feeling alone in the responsibility and di fficulty in passing down knowledge of her national heritage to her two-year-old son, lamenting that since they cannot visit yearly, he will not be able to have the same opportunities to develop a Gallego or Spanish identity:

"I want to but again I don't think that it's possible. Because he's never gonna have the, you know, summers at grandma's house. Um but, you know, I'm hoping that I can keep, keep part of it, part of my Spanish culture, give him that. [ ... ] keep speaking to him in Spanish. I think it's a very important thing because he'll keep that a lot, hopefully for many years. Uh bringing him to Spain, I know I can't bring him here every summer but maybe a couple, every couple of years [...]" (004)

She additionally notes that she also aims to "Make him a lot of cocido", a Spanish culinary dish. But even if she maintains speaking to him in Spanish and cooking him food, she acknowledges that without being in Galicia, it will not be the same, "It's my son, he's never gonna know this." Participants acknowledge that the lack of a cohesive transnational social field in the US means that visits to Galicia are essential to instilling an identity in their children.

Outside of their own family or small social circle, it is rare for participants to meet anyone from Galicia. However, they often discuss this inherent feeling of an imagined shared experience with strangers that are also Galician:

"But it's always very interesting to find a Gallego and when you find those people who have some relation to Galicia, it's amazing how you bond, and you just talk about Galicia. And it's almost like a sisterhood/brotherhood kind of sense. And I probably only see these people once or twice or whatever and it's amazing. [ ... ] I think it's a very strong proud culture that people are proud to be Gallegos so when you find a person from Galicia, it just brings everything together you know. [ ... ] no matter how little we know of each other, you're a Gallego it's a cultural bond there even though I wasn't born there." (018)

Even with this pride in being from Galicia, in the US, many participants tell people they are Spanish not Galician, because Galicia is a fairly unknown region and national minority. They tend to switch between using both terms in an interview. However, in the US, when they say they are Spanish, they are still often faced with ignorance about Spain and have to navigate complicated situations around what the term Spanish means in a country with a large community of Spanish-speaking immigrants from South and Central America. One participant described the process behind how to answer questions about where he was from:

"Most of the time I just say Spanish, right? And I've gotten reactions. If you say, 'I'm a Spaniard' and they happen to be Spanish then they think you're snotty and you're trying to say making sure you don't ge<sup>t</sup> confused with a South American or Central American. Right? So, so you ge<sup>t</sup> like an attitude there whereas it's ok for a Columbian to say he's Columbian I don't see him saying, 'I'm South American', somewhere one of those countries. Right? I don't understand. And then the other thing is you know I've found throughout my life that a lot of people don't even know where Spain is so then it becomes an embarrassing moment. Then I have to explain that it's European and not somewhere south of the border." (010)

Participants are constantly weighing what is easiest to be described as in each situation while also simultaneously navigating America's history of racial classification.

In researching the construction of Galician identity through repetitive homeland visits by Galician-Americans, this research found participants eager to share their experiences of racism in the US as an explanation for the way they experience pride in being Galician both in Galicia and in the US. Participants repeated stories about people thinking Spain was in South America and being told they were not white. One younger participant (019) in his 30s told a story about how his nickname

in school was "The Mexican". Older generations often described being confused for Puerto Rican. However, regardless of age, participants recounted being racially categorized 'incorrectly' and therefore receiving racial slurs and other forms of prejudice. This discussion of racial prejudice was accompanied by two reactions. Firstly, participants used stories of prejudice to describe how proud they were to be from Spain, and even more so from Galicia. One participant recounted how being called a 'spic', an o ffensive term used in the US towards non-white Hispanics, increased her identification as Spanish.

"And there was this Irish family the Handleys over there, Julie can tell you, I smacked the hell out of him because he called me a spick and from then on I always said, 'I'm from Spain! I'm from Spain!' I was like so proud to be from Spain."

The prejudice in the US therefore acted as one of the many reasons that participants felt a strong a ffinity for and the continual need to visit the homeland through multiple generations.

Secondly, participants reacted to racial prejudice and ignorance about Spain through an increased and intensified romanticization of Galicia's Celtic past. Participants do not describe Spain as a European and therefore 'white' country; rather, they explain how the part of Spain they are from is Celtic and therefore more white than people think of when they hear participants are from Spain: "When people usually think Spain they think south. They're used to bull running and stu ff and I have to explain that it's not really that" (009). This reductive image of Spain as equivalent to southern Spain or bullfighting falls in line with the literature that identifies these romanticized exotic stereotypes of Spain as being constructed by foreigners but reproduced by the tourism industry (Storm 2017). Participants experience these stereotyped images firsthand and describe having to utilize the Galician landscape to describe the diversity of Spain. It is common for Galician-Americans to compare their country with Ireland instead of the rest of Spain. They cite the green landscape, rocky coasts, rainy weather, and bagpipes: "I always say, 'Can you picture Ireland? The green, the hills, the valleys, lots of lakes? That is Galicia, that is Galicia.' [ ... ] There's no di fference I said there really is none" (014).

While Galicia is distinct from the rest of Spain and does have a historical Celtic influence, Galicians and even governmen<sup>t</sup> organizations, such as the tourism board, have engaged in overemphasizing Galicia as a Celtic nation. Many groups ruled Galicia but "none of these groups ever 'mastered' the region"; not even the Celts (Gemie 2006, p. 27). But whether these narratives of a Celtic Galicia are imagined or not, these constructed versions of history "have real, material and symbolic e ffects" (Hall 1990, p. 226). Just as Anderson (1991) argued, it is not whether these claims to a Galician Celtic nation are factual that is of concern here, it is the way Galicia is imagined as Celtic that is central to the construction of a Galician identity.

Galicia's landscape is often presented for political aims as green, wet, and rural in contrast to the arid Mediterranean south, creating oppositions between the more dominant southern image of Spain and Galicia ( <sup>L</sup>ópez Silvestre and González 2007). Participants use these narratives of landscape and an imagined Celtic past to create these same binaries and separate them from that of the rest of Spain, creating a narrative of national identity for specific aims. They use this representation of Galicia as a reaction to being categorized by the wider society as "not white". It acts as a way that Galicia is constructed as 'whiter' and culturally distinct from the rest of Spain, but also as a nation whose identity is bound as equally to history and culture as it is to landscape and place. Similarly, in their research on second-generation Haitian youth, Fouron and Nina (2002) showed how participants were rejected by American society based on race, creating an increased identification with being Haitian and engagemen<sup>t</sup> in the transnational community. While this research does not intend to analyze the American racial system or critique participants for playing into the highly stratified racial society of the US, it does argue that the way participants are consistently defining and legitimizing their national heritage impacts the way in which they use the visit to construct a Galician identity as white and in reaction to being told by American society that they are not white.

## *4.2. The Visit: Constructing a Galician Identity*

These repeat homeland visits that are common among Galician-Americans in this region are an essential activity necessary in order to engage in not only a transnational life, but the construction of a Galician identity. The homeland trip was often viewed by participants as an obligation in order to claim this identity. However, before participants were able to reflect on the necessity of the visit itself, most interviews constructed an image of Galicia as a nation of emigrants. Consistent with the literature on how the Galician governmen<sup>t</sup> moved between contradictory representations of Galician emigration, participants imagined Galicia as the nostalgic rural, where poverty drove emigration, along with the narrative of Galician inherent qualities of success.

Galicia was described and imagined as the rural idyllic, where the nostalgia of the traditional lived: A place where community still thrived and "everybody knew everybody" (003):

"[Galicia is] a beautiful country type of environment, you know, where people lived o ff the land, they did not have a lot of money, they did not have a lot of education. But they basically made the most of what they had and knew, and they did it to their fullest extent. They lived their lives to the fullest extent" (012)

This participant also described this narrative of the rural traditional through the lens of innocence.

"But I still think in this area they retain a little bit of that innocence as well. So, it hasn't fully gone o ff the deep end like you would see in Madrid or even more so in Barcelona. Barcelona's way o ff on the other side. In fact, Barcelona, I think is almost, it's not Spain. Madrid is a lot more like Spain. And then uh and in Galicia still retains I think a little bit of that uh, that innocents". (012)

Barcelona and Madrid represent the urban modernized while Galicia still represents the rural traditional, and therefore innocent. His description of Galicia reflects an identity similar to that of national representations of rural landscape, submissive and traditional while simultaneously nationalizing the landscape as Galician ( <sup>L</sup>ópez Silvestre and González 2007; Santos and Trillo-Santamaría 2017).

This narrative of the rural lifestyle close to nature embedded in national landscape was simultaneously used to construct Galicia as a place of migration. The rural was also associated with poverty and hardships that lead to emigration. It was important for participants to describe how they became a family of immigrants with a dual Galician-American identity in order to explain why it is so important for them to make return visits to the homeland. These family immigration histories highlighted themes of economic struggles, family separation, and the hardships of immigration in the Galician migrant experience that lead to a wider perspective of how these participants understood what it is to be Galician.

Participants recounted their family history of immigration, starting with economic hardships and widespread poverty, and explaining how the rural landscape could not provide opportunities for many in the area and acted as a catalyst for the initial migration process. Families generally did not emigrate all at once; it was a slow process, where in the midst of this poverty, little by little, families would make their way to America:

"All the families here, every family up and down this road here, and your grandmother, all of them lived the same way. Absent husbands and little, one by one, they would take their children away. There was no life here, there was no way to earn a living except if you, you know, the ground and sometimes the ground didn't produce anything. There was no future for them. The future was in the United States. And it was sad. It was very very sad and very di fficult on the families and these women". (011)

It was out of economic necessity that families were driven to immigrate. But this immigration process was painful and emotional. These stories were recounted and felt in many di fferent generations of immigrants; however, they were most emotional and frequently referred to by those who had first-hand experience.

"007b: I just remember when we left, my mother screaming and crying and because we had left my brother here. He was sick and he couldn't go at the time and my mother screaming. That stays with you that screaming that she did at the time.

007a: Did your brother, did that brother end up dying here?

007b: Yes, he did. Yeah, yes yes."

"The people across the street they were raised in this house and the middle child came out with a box full of money, went like this [shook the money] and said, 'I don't have to go to America'. And I told him, 'You're lucky. You don't know what it is to have to leave your country'". (013)

Participants recounted narratives of immigration demonstrating the sacrifices that were made for their family. Those who lived through the Franco regime added an additional layer of suppression of national identity into their narrative.

Through these migration stories, the Galicia that their families emigrated from was not constructed as the nostalgic rural landscape many had described; it was also presented as the rural impoverished landscape of emigration. However, it also became the starting point for the eventual narrative of success:

"Before it was like Vietnam and now it's uh now you know basically now basically it's di fferent it's completely di fferent. You know because in those years they were farmers, so they have cows, cows in the house, pigs, chicken". (015)

This participant who left Galicia at the age of 25 in the late 1960s goes on to describe how "everything is better now" and how Galicia has "caught up" with rest of the world and the 21st century. Galicia is therefore constructed as rural nostalgic innocence along with the narratives of both emigration as a consequence of poverty and the success of Galicians. One US-born participant describes seeing the changes throughout time from her first visit in 1978 to now:

"I mean they sacrificed a lot you know. They went through many many years of not having and now they have everything that we have in the United States. You know they're on par so to speak with you know with the West, with you know United States and England. And you know there's a prosperity here that they never had before. From '78 to the present and they have everything". (011)

Through these stories of sacrifice and success, participants have constructed the Galician character as hard working, a people that have overcome a lot, and are proud of what they achieved. These stories constructed an image of Galicia not as poor with extreme hardships but rather these stories acted to produce an image of Galicia as defined by the strength and hard work involved in overcoming these struggles. For one US-born interviewee, the "one quality that seems to define Gallegos that they're hard workers and that they travel the world to do the best for their families" (014). This participant defines Galicia through narratives of migration and frequent global mobility as hardworking and successful. Additionally, through their continual visits, homeland tourists are simultaneously creating this mobility and narrative of success since through their regular return visits to Galicia, this dual identity emerges as proof of these hardworking qualities. The ability that they can now visit becomes essential to the Galician experience as it demonstrates having what they coded as Galician qualities of sacrifice, a strong work ethic, and success. However central to the way participants both interact with Galicia as a place and the imagined community is the lens of experiencing Galicia through continual visits.

Galician migrants in this study choose to make return visits rather than permanently moving to Galicia. In fact, many are very adamant in their refusal to move to Galicia, because they see themselves as Americans who are Galician not as Galicians. When asked why she came to Galicia every year, one participant who left Galicia when she was nine exclaimed that she comes back "Because I'm a real Gallega! I mean I love the United States that's my number one. My number two is Galicia, Spain. I'll be honest with you" (007b). Participants were generally very strong in their conviction that they are American first but that being American does not exclude them from also identifying as Galician.

"I will always be American first and then Spanish. No no. That I'm very certain of, I'm American first always and then Spanish. And I'm very proud of being Spanish, or Spanish ancestry, I should word that right. I am an American of Spanish ancestry and I'm very proud of my Spanish ancestry. And I think I've passed that on to my children. That's why we're here. I'd like to pass that on to my grandchildren". (011)

This interviewee was born in the US but visits regularly because she sees herself as Spanish; she states that she wants to pass her heritage on to her grandchildren as well, and that is why they are visiting. An essential part of identifying as Spanish/Galician is having been there, the visit.

Through these habitual visits, participants were able to experience what they identified as markers of Galician cultural identity and community life that they could not in the US, most of which were centered around food. For example, participants cited visiting Galicia and eating the local barnacles called percebes that are impossible to ge<sup>t</sup> back in the US and which were described as tasting like the pure Galician sea (001). They go to the local fairs and festivals in the towns, engaging in a community life in public sphere they do not often experience in the US. They spend time with family who visits or lives there along with friends and other Galician-Americans visiting during the summer. But participants do not come just for the cultural activities that are inaccessible in the US, they come because Galicia for them is an embodied identity, a feeling of home that can only be experienced through the visit. The emotion and feelings of home that participants described by just being in Galicia were what drew them back and what were essential in creating an imagined Galician identity. Going back to Galicia regardless of how much it has changed over the years brought back emotional memories for participants. One participant who left Galicia at the age of six explains: "When I come back now, um. I mean obviously this has changed a lot so it's not exactly what I remember. But I still feel that home feeling" (012). This concept of feeling at home has been described within return visitors as a concept that shifts through the visit (Baldassar 2001). While both the US and Galicia feel like home, it is through continual visits to Galicia that participants are able to feel fully at home in both countries. With very little family left in Galicia, one participant describes what keeps bringing her back every year: "My roots. That's it. And it's hard to pull up from that. It's hard" (001). What brings them back year after year is the emotional connection to the physical place itself, and that experience is an essential component to claiming a Galician identity. The place itself becomes part of their identity. As one US-born participant describes, "There are ties you know there are definitely ties. It becomes part of you. [Galicia] just becomes part of you."

One participant that left Galicia at the age of 19 and, like many others, visits every year and owns property there stated that it is di fficult to understand why she and so many others feel obligated to return every year. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was, but she acknowledges that this mobility back and forth to Galicia has just become part of what Galician-Americans from this area do and it has now become unavoidable:

"Galicia is in you. You take the Gallego from Galicia, but you never take Galicia from the Gallego, ever. Every Gallego I know, and I know hundreds of them, they come here every summer they go to Casa Galicia, the Gallego clubs in New York, their children marry Gallegos, those children come back, those grandchildren come back. It's something in this place that pulls you back" (013)

While highly sentimental, these frequent trips were also seen by participants as a duty or chore, which they are happy to do but as still something obligatory. The continual visits were necessary, an essential component to be able to claim a Galician identity. Participants describe yearly visits as a "habit" (008a) and even a "punishment" (008b). This description of the visit as something participants

are forced to do refers to how the visit is perceived as essential for identification as a Galician-American; it becomes part of who they are, it is perceived as inescapable. While individuals must partake in this continual mobility between Galicia and America to identify as Galician, Galicia then becomes imagined both as a physical location and an identity defined by constant mobility, rather than emigration.

While some Galician-Americans do return more permanently, often when they retire, those that visit every year choose not to. Even though they choose not to move back, their experience exists intertwined with relatives and friends that have moved back, even family that has moved to other parts of Spain and other countries worldwide. The example of visiting is just one experience that demonstrates the complexity of migratory flows but also demonstrates the mobility at the core Galician identity for these Americans. Many participants had siblings, parents, and other family that did decide to move back permanently, some had family that moved back temporarily, and some had family that lived there for half the year and the US for half the year. But for these participants, their choice not to move back was not seen as a big deal. For participants, being Galician is a transnational activity; some people move there, others visit. Being Galician-American is being involved in multiple return visits surrounded by family that chooses to return permanently or temporarily, and other family that visits the US simultaneously. They choose to live in the US within a transnational social field that is dependent upon the mobility of return visits. Making visits to the place is not only essential to Galician identity but transnationalism, as a defining characteristic in how they experience being Galician. This constant movement between the migration and return or return visits makes migration a continual process rather than a destination. It also breaks down traditional conceptual categories of home vs. away, immigration vs. emigration, and returning vs. migrating.

Galicia, for these participants, exists as a physical place that must be experienced by visiting, it is constructed through images of rural landscape used to evoke romantic notions and innocence, and through a landscape of impoverished hardships that act as the catalyst of emigration imagining Galicia's past through the lens of migration. Through these visits, alongside the reality of the multiple patterns of mobilities experienced by their family and friends, the visit become their transnational social field of constant mobility, where the physical location of Galicia as the foundation of their dual identity still matters and is essential to the construction of a Galician-American identity. It is therefore the visit that bridges the gap between Galicia as a physical and embodied location that is tied to identity and Galicia as experienced through emigration and multiple mobilities.
