However, the writers work with material which we do not posess, our words do not belong to us, languages belong the different peoples of the world.. At least that happened till today. Then we might say that as writers we belong to our own language, in a way our destiny is conditioned. Most of all contemporary writers, conscious of ourselves, keep a tight dialectics with language. And if we asked many people wether their language stood for their own country theyn wouldnt certainly know what to say. Because every artist belongs to his own language but also to his historical age.
Our age is more and more "without boundaries", the virtual ways of life occupy our days more often. The real space, the experience, the corporal life are shrinking. The sense of place, of belonging to a place, was something very important in traditional identity, today many think that they belong to nowhere. However we all speak a language even though we do not have the same relationship with language as our garndparents did. In the old traditional order monolinguism was frequent, people lived and died within the boundaries of a community, a nation and of a language. Today developed societies know the importance of citizens who have command of several languages, to be monolinguistic is archaic.
Thus thye relationship with language changed dramatically, there is no longer an absolute, "the language", but the somewhat ambiguos "languages". In spite of that we all have an intimate ralationship with a particular language.. However, everything is complex in our age, also the relationship with language, with llanguages.
I come from a place (¿do I belong to the place? More or less) that has a language that is a variant of what linguists call western Spanish Romance, a language that from Portugal to Brasil, but that place was subjected by other language, Castillian, or Spanish. Obviously the process of conquer and linguistic colonization are dramatic and unfair from the human viewpoint. However, what was a fierce imposition in the beginning today may be cultural richness, because people can speak to two big linguistc worlds. At any rate, being in the middle is not an easy position.
The most conscious citizens in Galiza know that we have civic duties, we must defend our collective interests, our own culture. When I write I have all this in mind, the very act of writing in Galician is a civic act, and I am conscious that all I write in Galizan belongs to the heritage of that language. However, I do not write for my compatriots, as I was sometitimes accused of doing, I write for readers who enjoy what I do. And when I write I imagine someone with a sensibility and a culture such that can speak a language I do not know and live in a place I never visited. Therefore, I write for my contemporaries.
And I really conscious that anywhere can be the center of the universe, where I live, where anybody who reads a book lives. It is that every culture has within an entire world and every author the ability to interpret his age. Thus I am a Galizan, a Spaniard, or a European from Santiago de Compostela.
Suso de Toro