Shorts: Identity is always a problem

Identity is always a problem. You go somewhere and straightaway the awful question pops up: where are you from? And the answer always contains the prefabricated cliché. The old Basque saying euskalduna, fededuna—Basque-speaking, faith-holding; Basque-speaking, beretwearing; Basque-speaking, weapon-wielding. So you aren’t yourself at all, you’re what the other person wants, you have an identity which is a way of fitting a cliché. But that’s not the worst of it. It’s understandable that people from other places have a certain point of view on your country. The clichés are created inside and have already spread, that’s what’s horrible about it. And this still happens. In many places people dress up in farmhouse costumes for the fiestas.