Embracing My Spanish Heritage

EMBRACING MY SPANISH HERITAGE

Dear readers, as you can probably gage, this isn't a very Christmassy post, and if I'm being honest, I  shouldn't even be writing this post at all. In fact, I should be using this time to write about how Parkinson's Disease is diagnosed for my uni essay, but alas, I am throwing my caution way into the wind. Sam Smith is singing 'Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas' on the radio as I write, and writing an essay two days before Christmas doesn't sound like a very merry Christmas to me, but writing an overdue blog post most certainly does. So here we are, a post about my Spanish Heritage. And why might I be writing about that, I hear you say. Well it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, so I thought I would externalise all those thoughts cascading around my mind, and write about something that has become increasingly important to me over the years (can you tell by my writing style that I'm currently in 'essay mode'?).

My Spanish heritage stems from my Mum's side of the family, as my Mum's Mum, aka my Nana, is a proud, fiery, sparkling Spaniard hailing from Galicia, on the north-west coast of Spain. Therefore my mum and my uncles are a half Spanish, whilst me and my cousins are a quarter Spanish. The fact that I'm a quarter Spanish is something that never really concerned me when I was growing up. I knew my Nana was Spanish, but I'd never viewed her in terms of her heritage or original culture. I knew she had a different accent, I knew she pronounced some words different to the way I did, I knew that she made amazing food I could never find anywhere else, I knew that sometimes when the phone rang and my Nana answered, she would talk rapidly in a different language to the person on the other end, and in the process, almost transformed into an entirely different person. I knew she was a bit different to everybody else's Nana, but that was as far as it went. I didn't realise that every time I saw my Nana, I was unknowingly being exposed to a different culture, a different heritage. I didn't realise that in my Nana, I was fortunate to have a special connection to another country and culture so different to my own. Silly as it sounds, I never thought of my Nana as Spanish, nor did I consider her Spanish origins or previous life in Spain. To me she was a hybrid of cultures, in a league of her own, and I guess I just took it all for granted, because she was and is my only Nana, so I never knew otherwise. And although I was aware that her being Spanish embedded some of that Spanish heritage into me too, I don't remember it ever being of particular importance to me. It was just the way things were.

All that began to change when I had to learn Spanish at secondary school. It started to open my eyes to Spain and my Spanish heritage, and started to shake that bell of recognition within my mind. Although I didn't really care for Spain or its language, nor did I particularly like being forced to learn Spanish against my will, I couldn't help but feel its relevance to me. It felt like I had a personal link to this language, that no-one else had. It was tied to me in some way. To everyone else it was merely another class they had to do, but to me it was not only that, but also a tentative gateway to part of my heritage that I had essentially ignored until then. This was the language that defined my Nana, this was the language that some of my ancestors communicated with, this language was something of great importance to what makes my family who we are. I still didn't really enjoy or particularly like learning Spanish at school, but when I had to choose between French or Spanish for my GCSE, although I was impartial to both languages, to go against Spanish, when part of my heritage was so closely bound to it, when I had a living, breathing native Spaniard within my immediate family, felt very, very wrong. There really was no choice in the matter. I simply had to choose Spanish. It was the only choice that felt right, and ultimately, that choice is what came to define a very important time of my life. It changed everything for me.

When I started learning Spanish at GCSE, I experienced a light bulb moment, when suddenly everything about the language just suddenly made sense to me, in a way that no language ever had before. I still remember that moment so vividly now, and it's something that has stayed with me ever since. I suddenly started to enjoy learning Spanish, shock horror, not only because I really, really enjoyed exploring the mechanics of the language, and because I could order a drink of coke and understand some of the menu whenever we went on holiday to Spain, but also because it was bringing me closer to my heritage and my Nana. I felt more in touch with both those things, than I had ever done in my life, and strange as it sounds, it was quite a liberating experience. My Nana has never explicitly said it, but I think that she's always been very relieved, and secretly a bit proud, that I chose to learn Spanish both at GCSE and at A Level. It's definitely brought us closer together, and strengthened my relationship with not only my Nana, but my Grandad too (he's an avid learner of Spanish too). And I love how my choice to connect with my heritage means so much to my Nana, likewise I love how it makes me feel so much more in touch with my origins, which compose a quarter of my being. When I look across my family, and the nine of us that are lucky enough to have a segment of Spain embedded within us, only me and one of my uncles have chosen to fully embrace and connect with it. Currently only two of us have allowed it to become an important part of who we are, and allowed it to become an important defining factor of our lives, but even then, the Spanish heritage that threads through our family still remains evident, and so beautifully ties our family together.

For me personally, when I look back over my teenage years, my encounters with the Spanish culture have always been very definitive. Alongside learning the language, visiting Spain for myself, and also meeting numerous Spanish people, including my two Spanish teachers and friends from my Spanish exchange, were all very influential experiences. When I was growing up, I really struggled to find my identity and who I was. Though I was and still am very proud of my English heritage and culture, I never fully identify with it. It never felt fitting enough. There was a part of me that my English heritage and culture just couldn't account for, and solely subscribing to it in turn made me feel very distinctively average, and also rather lost. It was like I was always searching for that something else to define me, or unlock the potential I felt was buried deep within me. Being 100% English through and through just didn't seem to bring out the best in me. But it was when I had increasing exposure to my Spanish heritage, that I felt I truly came to life, and like I was connecting with a very important component of who I am. It was like I had some Spanish left in me from generations past, and I needed the Spanish influences in my life to help nurture it and grow it, because as it turns out, it would ultimately form a very essential, core part of who I am. What I find in the Spanish culture, and Spaniards I've met, the solace I find, the things I identify with, are all things I could never find in the English culture and my English origins. There's just something about Spain that gives me a very strong sense of belonging and comfort, and embracing the Spanish within me helped me finally come into my own and set myself free.

For example, discovering Dolce & Gabbana, who actively celebrate the Italian/ Spanish aesthetic, and looking to the Spanish women I've met or see in the media: the way they dress, the way they present and carry themselves, the way they encapsulate their beauty, their prowess and fierceness... I identify with it all so much more than I do with my English counterparts. They're the kind of women that I want to be too, and because of my Spanish link, I feel like I am one of those women, or I at least have the potential to be. My Spanish heritage makes me feel so connected to it all; it was and still is like a lifeline, a passport, to another world, a licence to explore that important 25% of who I am. Embracing my Spanish heritage helped me to celebrate my own aesthetic, and feel comfortable in my own skin for the first time ever. It made me glad that I look the way I do, and feel confident in myself and what I believe in. Likewise continuing to maintain my link with the Spanish culture through their music, books, magazines, fashion, art, food, language, culture, talking to my Spanish friends, the country itself, talking to my Nana about her life in Spain and learning all I can... it all helps to fuel the fire and keep that link alive.

As I've harped on about this entire post, embracing my Spanish heritage is something I believe truly was the making of me, and I suspect will continue to define me as I complete my transition into womanhood. I can't stress to you how proud and grateful I am, that I've been lucky enough to have my origins stem from this beautiful, amazing country, as well as my beloved England, and that I can identify so vividly with both cultures. I'm so lucky that my link with Spain makes me part of who I am, and that I will always have this tie that no-one can ever take away from me. And although people are often surprised that I'm a quarter Spanish, because I don't often look it, I don't even mind because I can feel my Spanish blood pulsing through my veins, and that's all that matters to me.