Identities on the Portuguese-Spanish border: permanence and transformation

Abstract

In order to understand the construction and re-creation of identities of those who live on a section of the Portuguese-Spanish border, specifically that part of the frontier where the northern Portuguese region of Trás-os-Montes meets the Spanish region of Galicia, this essay examines and attempts to interconnect three elements: the theories used by social scientists concerning the concepts of “identity” and of “borders”; the ideas (and stereotypes) of the “Other” held by the Portuguese and the Spaniards throughout their history since the founding of Portugal in the twelfth century; and the ethnography, in both senses of product and of process, carried out by the author over the past two decades in villages and towns on the Luso-Spanish frontier, both before and after the Schengen Agreement.