Two Sides of One River

Galicia, the region in the northwest corner of Spain that is contiguous with northern Portugal, is known officially as the Autonomous Community of Galicia. It is recognized as one of the historical nationalities that makes up the Spanish state, as legitimized by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. This study compares the topographic and ethnographic descriptions produced with respect to Galicia and Portugal during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to understand how the integration in different states and the existence of a specific nationalist discourse marked differences in the ways that two bordering regions in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula have been represented. Although Galicia and Portugal each belong to different states, their similarities are frequently alluded to. The author explores the presence and role of the imagination in creating a sense, over the last century and a half, of the national being and becoming of these two related peoples.