The Past on the Line The Use of Oral History in the Construction of Present-day Changing Identities on the Portugues e-Spanish Border

W h i l e it ha::; long been rccogni::;ed that borders are prime sites for the defining and redefi ning of nations and states, it is only comparatively recently that it has been thought worthwh i l e to examine closely the social rea l ity of those actually l iv i ng on i ntcrnational borders. This paper looks at some ofthc oral history 'the storie::; they tel l about them selves' of the inh abitants of a part of the Portuguese-Span i sh border; specifically an area of the frontier between the Portuguese region ofTras­ o::;-Montes and the Spanish region of Galicia. Tales of bandits, of smugglers , of thc Spanish Republican maquis and of the police of both sides reveal the often surpr ising fluidity of who is 'us' and who is 'them', as well as perh aps helpi n g u s t o u nderstand just how much the new 'Europe without Frontiers' is rhetoric and how much is or might become reality.

Prof" essor William Ka vanagh, Universidad Pontif" icia Comillas, Madrid; Universi dad San Pablo-CEU, Madrid; Velazquez, 7, ES-28006 Madrid, Spain. E-mail: su. kavanaghw@profesor. sumadrid.es Talking not long ago with one of my friends there was a time when we used to call them our 'informants' -of the changes brought about at his village on the Portuguese-Spanish border by the so-called 'Europe Without Frontiers' (or at least without internal frontiers), he thought for a moment and then he replied, carefully and repeating his words: 'You may remove the door, but the doorframe remains . . . you may remove the door, but the doorframe remains. ' We are told that borders are important plac es for understanding such things as states and nations -ideas, abstractions, 'imagined com munities', to be sure -but with administrative powers which have very real practical conse quences for those who live in them and, in a special way, for those who live on their borders. I suggest it may be interesting to listen to those living on the border, to listen to their oral history -'the stories they tell about themselves' -to perhaps help us understand just how much a 'Europe Without Frontiers' is rhetoric and how much is -or might become -reality.
The research I have been carrying out on a section of the Portuguese-Spanish border is long-term and on going. The object is to observe at close hand , at one specific location, the much heralded transformation of Europe's 'internal' international borders from 'barriers' to 'bridg es'. Although these frontiers always have been -and according to my friend in his border village, always will be -a bit of both. The area of the Portuguese-Spanish border -or Spanish Portuguese border, if you prefer -I have been looking at is the land border known as the raia I raya seca ('the dry borderline') between the Portuguese region of Tnis-os-Montes and the Spanish region of Galicia, specifically between three villages -a Galician village whose terri tory juts like a spur or wedge into Portugal and the two Portuguese villages on either side of it.
One of the Portuguese villages is only two kilo metres to the south ofthe Spanish village, while the other Portuguese village is somewhat fur ther away to the west. All three villages are at approximately the same altitude and their soils In a field divided by the border, a man from one of the Portuguese villages who is married to a woman from the Gal ician vill age. and climates are similar. As may be seen in photograph 1, the landscape does not appear to change in any significant way at the border. The same may be said for the languages spoken on either side of the border -the Galego of the Spanish village is not that different from the Portuguese spoken in the Portuguese villages.
The older village houses appear to be the same on both sides of the boundary -and most still have hollowed out spaces in their walls (known as secretas) where the smuggled contraband could be hidden when the border guards came to inspect. Yet these villages have had very different national histories, different political systems and different state administrations for hundreds of years. It comes as no surprise then that many things change radically when one crosses the border. Take the religious celebra tions , for example, which people from both sides will attend. While at the romerias/romerias, which are gatherings at a local shrine, the priests from both sides will be present and there will be two masses said, one in Galician and one in Portuguese, and the priests will also be present at the religious processions held in the neigh bouring villages of the other country, the look and feel of these ceremonies are very different on one side or other of the international border, as may be clearly seen in photographs 2 and 3.
The decorations of the images of Christ, the Virgin and the saints in the Galician religious procession are very simple, while those of the Portuguese religious procession are extremely ornate. The music played on either side of the frontier is very different as well . The Galicians play the bagpipes, the Portuguese do not; the Portuguese play the accordion, and the Gali cians do not. And the fact that Portuguese emigrants went preferentially to France or to the United States, while the Galicians went to Germany or to Switzerland means that the new houses they built on their return give a very different look to the villages today. Yet some of the most important differences are 'invisible' at first glance -all those aspects where the mod ern nation-state has control over the lives of its A religious procession at the Galician village.
citizens, such as health, welfare, education, justice, taxes, etc. Even the time changes at the borderline, with the clocks in Portugal set an hour behind those in Spain.
It has been said that, as reminders of the past, borders are 'time written in space'. This is certainly true in the case of the border between Portugal and Spain, which as one of the oldest in Europe -dating from the founding of Portu gal as an independent nation in the 12l" century -has been altered very little since then. It has not always been a peaceful border, as the many fortifications on both sides of the border show only too well . Portugal is only one-fifth the size of Spain and has only a quarter of the popula tion of its larger neighbour. Not surprisingly the Portuguese have always looked with certain apprehension at the Spanish, especially since the period of some sixty years ( 1580 to 1640) -in its entirety to Portugal and the borderline was moved a hundred metres to the north. This was expressly done to control the smuggling, which, with many houses having a door giving onto Spain and another door giving onto Portu gal, was inevitable, and the order ofthe day. The village was known as a pouo Ipueblo promiscuo and is recorded as having been so since at least the beginning of the 16'" century.
A common characteristic of borders is that they are liminal areas where one may more easily elude control by the authorities. In trou bled times the border provides the perfect es cape for those in difficulties. During the Span ish Civil War ( 1936-39) there were quite a few who saved their lives by crossing the border in time. And Portuguese who wished to avoid mil itary service have often made their way to Spain. Even after the end of the Spanish Civil War, there were a number of Spaniards living in Portuguese villages along the border. Some, if they had been identified as politically suspect by the Franco regime, were there merely for th eir safety, wh i l e others were operat i n g as a n ti -Francoist m aq u i s, crossing the border to murder members of the Spanish Guardia Civil and the local heads of the Francoist regime's si ngle party, the Falange, and then retu rning to th eir bases in Portugal.
In some circumstances, the fact that the Church is the same on both sides of the bo rder may also be utilised by the inhabitants of the borderland. A woman of the Galician village whose husband was killed in the Civil War has been receiv ing a war widow's pension ever si nce.
She has been living with another villager for many years, but has not lost the pension through remarriage . The couple simply married in the next village -in Portugal. Thus, as far as the Spanish State is concerned, the woman re mains an unmarried widow, while in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church and of their neigh bours, the couple are not 'living in sin' . On the other hand, not long ago a young Portuguese couple were married in the Galician village and immediately left for the United States -sepa rately. The woman had no trouble in getting an entry visa as her parents are already living and working there and she applied as a single wom an. The man did the same. Had they asked for a visa as a married couple, it would apparently have been much more difficult to obtain. So a Spanish marriage meant that neither the Por tuguese State nor the American immigration authorities knew the real situation of the cou ple.
However, it is smuggling, more than any other activity, which exhibits the tendency of those who live on a border to live outside nation al laws. Smuggling is culturally acceptable be haviour on the border. 'It was lovely', one Portu guese woman told me ofher years as a smuggler from the age of fourteen until she went to Paris to work when she was eighteen; ofhaving made various journeys each night with rucksacks of whiskey and tobacco weighing some twenty five to thirty kilos; and (the part she says she never told her mother about) of having being shot at by the guards. Border people structure much of their lives around their relations with 'foreigners'. In this sense, the border is a bridge and not a barrier. The laws against contraband, made by distant politicians insensitive to the local rea l i t ies o f' ihc bo rde r, a rc felt by those who live on ihc bo rde r io be u nj u st und u n reasona ble. Th e borderland v i l l agers are a 'we' group to whom the authori ties arc 'they' . ! special ly when they know that ihc state o fficial s themselves have cashed i n on ihc illegal border trade. Many villagers on both s ides ofihc frontier tel l stories ofhav i n g a pair o f'shocs for thci r ch i l d confi scat ed as they got to the border, only to see the same pair of shoes a few days later on the feet of the son ofi h c border guard who confiscated th em.
Appa rcn ily, the border pol ice kept most of what was confiscated. It may have been only a few kilos of rice or pasta or som eti mes a much larger shipm ent. One man tol d me that he had once had five th ousand kilos o f'bananas taken by the border guards. What most an noyed him, he explained, was th at he was caugh t even after he had taken the precaution of first bribing the corporal then in charge of the border post. He admits, however, that it was probably thanks to the bribe that in the end he was allowed to keep half the load of bananas. Portuguese villagers tell other stories of having to sell their fields on the Spani sh side of the border because of the difficulties given them by their own border police. Not only were they required to get a special permit to farm their land and could only cross the border during the hours of daylight, but the guards would often, with the slightest pretext, confiscate the crops the farmers were bringing home. Some villagers claim that the only people who would ever risk going past the border post were the smugglers -in order to pay bribes to the border guards. Many stories are told of the frequent abuse of their position of power on the part of the border guards -of both sides -and of their not infre quent brutality. A Galician woman married to a Portuguese man said that, the day after her wedding in the Galician village, she accompa nied her new husband to visit his relatives in the nearby Portuguese village only to be stopped at the border by a Portuguese border guard, who sent her back to her village, while he let her husband cross into Portugal. She explained that it was only when she mentioned the inci dent to the priest of her village, that she learnt she had a right to enter Portugal as the wife of a Portuguese man. Others say that when there was a Jcast-day cel ebration at either village, the border guards would sometimes turn people back at the border. At oth er ti mes th ey m i ght even fine someone for 'crossing the border cl an destinely'; one Galician villager told me thai h e h a d been fi ned variou s times for crossing the border because the guards 'felt like it'. Villagers say th at wh ile Spanish and Portuguese bord er guards were both bad and that both woul d confi scate whatever you were carrying, the Por tuguese guardin.has were more li kely to beat you up as well . When asked why this was so, one Portuguese man replied: 'Because they were poorer, more backward'. Another Portuguese man told me that when he was fifteen he was stopped on the borderline by the Guarda Fiscal and accused of smuggling. He says that, al though he was carrying nothing, he was hit on the head so hard by one of the guardinhas that he was knocked unconscious. When the boy's family went to complain, the head of the border post asked the guard involved why he had hit the boy so savagely. 'Because I thought he was a Spaniard', replied the guard . He was expelled from the corps. Other stories tell of smugglers shot dead on the raia I ray a by the border guards.
One Galician man was a bit luckier: he told me how his contraband group had been challenged by a patrol of guardinhas at the border. But while his companions bolted off in different directions and escaped arrest, he had tried to push his way past the guards and one of them had shot him in the testicles, though luckily he suffered no permanent injury. What most an gered him, he told me, was that he was 'already some two hundred metres into Spain, where the guardinhas have no jurisdiction whatsoever'.
Many people say that the border police 'were hated by everyone'. One could, of course, some times hope to rely on divine intervention to save oneself from the wrath of the border police. There is a splendid mural painted on an inner wall of the church of the Portuguese village closest to the borderline, which depicts three Portuguese border guards on horseback in full gallop. The object of their chase is not shown, but the mural speaks of the milagre ('miracle') of a smuggler's escape from the guards thanks to the intervention of'Santo Antonio' (St Antho ny ). However, quite a few villagers on both sides of'thc border have spent ti me i n prison ( usua l ly j u ::;L a month o r ::;o) on acco u n t of' L h c i r con t ra band act iv ities.
H cou ld be claimed :.1 1:1 an 'a nthropologica l con::;tant' of' the I berian Pen i n s u l a thut the people of Lhc ncarc::;t nei ghbo u r i ng v i l lugc arc alway::; you r 'e nem ies' and a rc you r riva l::; be ca u se i n some sense t hey a rc yo u r eq u a ls. I t fo l lows !' rom this that the v i l lage on the fa r side of your traditi onal 'e n emies' are regarded as 'fri ends' fill l ow i n g the simple logic that 'the en e my ofmy en emy is my fri end '. And th i ::; hold::; true in these border v i l l ages. For Lhis reason , it is not as stra i ghtl() rwa rd as m ight first appear to d i scove r w h at ouch side th i n ks orthc 'Other'. H appears Lhat often people speu k of those on th e oth er side of the fi·onti er with ambiguity, sometimes with admiration and at oth er times with disdain. l n many way::; they appear to treat Yet when one asks people what they feel about those of the other country without speci fying the inhabitants of any particular village it is often mutual dislike which is the first thing to surface. The Galicians claim that, on first meet ing, the Portuguese 'appear to be muy f"01·males' 'The Po rtuguc::;c beat their wives', say the G u li c i a n ::;. Anc.l ::;o on a n d ::;o filrth , though ::;ome people do m a ke the correct observation that 'they p ro ba bly say the same thing about us.' When one asks peop le w h ether they wou ld like to sec a ch il d o f theirs marry someon e from the other cou n try, the most frequent reply is: 'No, t hey a rc very d i fferent from us'.
An d wh ile people from both sides attend the feast-day celebration in the neighbouring vil l age, the Ga l icians cl aim th at the Portu gu ese regard the lcsta as not having been a rea l ly good one if no one is killed during the day and, in su pport of their argument, will cite the case of th e man from the Galician village who 'many years ago' was murdered by his Portuguese neighbours whi l e attending the festa at the vi ll age n ext door. Th e Portu gu ese, on th eir side, state that the real violence happens at the Galician celebration. When speaking of their nearest Portuguese neighbours the Galicians say 'The best person at X is Jesus and even he is behind bars', referring to the image of Christ behind the grilles on the windows of the chapel at the entrance to the village. The Galicians explain that the Portuguese do not celebrate the feast day of Santiago (St James) -an impor tant feast day in Spain because St James was a Portuguese who 'escaped' from (a supposedly inferior) Portugal to (a supposedly superior) Spain.
The Portuguese claim that a Galician would never be generous, as a Portuguese would . On their side, the Galicians tell the story of the Portuguese who invites some Galicians to din ner and then gives his guests very little to eat. However, they were cheered up when they heard the man tell his wife to 'Bring out the chicken', until they realised that it is a live animal brought in to take advantage of the few crumbs dropped on the floor. This legendary tale is told in many places and the main character is gen erally 'a poor man', but at the border he becomes the 'Other'. Something ofthe same sort happens in the story about a woman -again, a Portu guese, as the tale was told by a Galician -who is in church talking with an image of St Antho ny. The woman is annoyed with the saint since she has prayed long and hard to be sent a husband, all to no avail. In her anger and frustra tion , she th row�; a stone at the stat ue, whi ch g·ives ofT a s m a l l cl oud o f smoke when h it. 'There you are', says the woman, 'smok i ng with out b u rn i n g and here 1 a m , burn i n g without smoki ng'. 'l'hc sa m e story is told by th e Portu guese, who natu ra l ly make the protagon ist of the ta l c a G al i c i a n woma n .
Even the appa ren tly true stories they tell about each other frequently underline their mutual di sdain. This one, for example: A Gali cian was work i ng in h i s field on tho border, when h i s Portuguese n eigh bo u r i n tho adjoin ing field began shouting ins ults at him. The Galician told his neighbour to watch it or he would let him have it with his shotgu n, which he happen ed to have with him as he had been out hunting rabbits. The Portuguese jeered and bent over turning his backside to the Galician, who quickly picked up his shotgu n and bl asted the Portuguese in the arse. The Portuguese let out a cry and fell down. Th o G alician, suddenly aware of what he had done -he was certain he had killed the Portuguese -ran back to his village and went to ask th e mayor what he ought to do, since he had killed a Portuguese.
The mayor asked him if the Portuguese had been shot in Spain or in Portugal. When the Galician replied 'In Portugal', the mayor is said to have told him 'Ah, then you needn't worry. Let the Portuguese bury him.' However, that is not the end of the story. Luckily, the Portuguese was not killed and managed to limp back to his village and was taken to hospital, where he was operated on and survived. He did nothing, how ever, about taking any legal action against the Galician . Here the explanations vary. Some say that his pride was more injured than his bum and he feared being made a figure of j est if he reported to the police what had happened. Oth ers, on the other hand, emphasise the feeling that the legal consequences of any crime or misdemeanour committed in one country can easily be avoided by simply crossing the border line. People tell the story of a man from the Galician village, a well-known smuggler, who simply popped into Portugal a few years ago when the police finally came for him when they discovered Portuguese coins in the scrap metal he had been claiming to be importing from somewhere else in Spain. The somewhat hastily 'retired' ex-smuggler later made his way to B razi l , where he is living happi ly.
This impunity provided by th e bord er i s illustrated by another story where tho you ng men of tho nearest of the Portuguese vil l ages had got into one of the periodic stone fightsi n f 1i r weather, a regular Sunday afternoon cus tom , i t seems -with tho young men of t.he Civil and the Guarda Fiscal had power over aspects of villagers' lives, they were never really part of the village, since they were, in the case of the Guardia Civil always and in the case of the Guarda Fiscal nearly always, from some where else. As well , complain villagers, while ordinary people had difficulties in crossing the border and even greater difficulties in bringing anything with them, the border guards them selves could cross freely and bring back whatev er they wished. Yet the life of a border guard could be a dangerous one as well. One man from the Portuguese village closest to the borderline told me how his grandfather, a Guarda Fiscal posted in his own village, had been killed on the raia. The grandson's story is that his guardinha grandfather had somehow managed to infil trate himself into a smuggling group, but that when he tried to arrest them as they crossed the the line i nto Portuga l , he was ove rpowe red u n ci k i l led. I L seems t h a t m a n y yea rs after event, a very old Gal ic ian, one of'Lho ga n g of'sm uggl ors who had ki l led h i s gra n d f' uthor, con fessed Lo tho Po rtugu ese 'w ith tea rs in h i s eyes' that h e had only h i t th e d i sgu i sed bord e r pol i ce man in sel f defence and had had no i n tention of'ki l l i n g h i m .
Vi l lage rs tol l tho story of' o n e new ly arr ived bord e r pol iceman w hoincredi b ly -h ad re fu sed to accept any bri bes and had even tri ed to arrest some smuggle rs w h o h ad previously paid of' f h i s com pan i on gu a rds Lo look the other way as the contraband went through . His fe llow gu ards -at the point of a pi sto l -quickly taught him th e rules oft he game. Afte r that, he Look h is cut l ike the rest of them. Vi l l agers te l l the story with th e clear im pli cati on th at non -corru pt po lice are con sid ered to be arbitrary and cruel to attempt to stop what is 'clean trade', whereas corrupt police are more human because they arc more reasonable. The authorities are al ways to be distrusted, except when they can be shown to be human. The Galician villagers tell with glee the story ofthe time when some young men of their village stole the pistols of some drunken Portuguese border guards. Their Span ish colleagues 'with much mockery' returned the arms to the Portuguese.
The Galicians tell another story of the time one of their villagers was caught on the border line by the Portuguese border guards, who sus pected him of smuggling. With the excuse that he would show them where he had hidden the contraband, the Galician lead the Portuguese across the border straight into the arms of a patrol of the Guardia Civil, who sent theguardin has packing, saying that the Portuguese had no right to be arresting anyone on Spanish soil. In this case, one authority was used to play off against the rival authority. Another story in which the border guards are made to look ridic ulous was told me by a Portuguese woman about her great-aunt who was caught by the Guarda Fiscal bringing two dozen eggs from Spain . Taking her to the post to pay a large fine -it seems that one would be fined so much for each egg confiscated -the woman was thinking desperately how to get rid of the eggs. It was quite impossible to simply throw them away, since she had one guard walking ahead of her unci one be h i n d her. What she did was to take the eggs o ne by one, suck the m , then crush the s h e l l s a n d drop the bi ts of eggsh ell i n th e tall grass a l ong the path without letting the gu ards notice what she was up to. Wh en the guards got her Lo the post, the woman was fou n d to be ca rry i n g noth i n g and the guardinhas had to let her go w i thou t a fi ne.
These sto ries bring out what I think is one of the most salient points of inter-border relation ships. That is, th at while on the one hand people on both sides of the borde r can give excellent reasons for despising those of the other country -many define themselves as superior to an 'Other' regarded as 'inferior'at the same time both si des have the same interests in outwit ting thc authorities. Since smuggling is, or rath er was u n ti I very recen t] y, so very profitab 1 c, the common distrust of authority brings together these people living on the border. People say that when there was confianr,;a I confianza (trust) they were all good partners. They state that 'money would never change hands at the bor derline'. The goods would be delivered and pay ment would be made later.
During the Second World War there was a mine near the Galician village that was used by the Germans as a cover in order to bring wolf ram (tungsten ore), used in the making ofbombs and aircraft, from Portugal to Spain. As Brit ain's oldest ally, Portugal was unable to export the wolfram directly to Germany, so the mineral was smuggled into Spain and then legally ex ported from Spain to Germany. At night, groups of from sixty to a hundred men would bring the sacks of wolfram loaded on donkeys and horses. The Portuguese would bring the wolfram to the border and the Galicians would then take it to the mine. The border police of both sides were bribed to look the other way (though only in a figurative sense; since the bribe was usually a percentage ofthe contraband, the guards would always count the horseloads). The following day, the sacks of mineral would be openly loaded onto lorries and shipped out. Villagers who worked in the mine at the time say that the amount of wolfram produced by the Galician mine was tiny in comparison to the amount of mineral shipped out as if coming from the mine.
This 'night work', as it is referred to, could be f··w very profi table ((Jr t h e v i l l agers, but had i ts drawbacks. One ofihe l ocal doctors con fided to me th ai he has deieded a h igh er incidence of cirrhosiR among those people, eRpecially those women , w h o worked 1iJr l ong periods as smug glers. The doctor puis this down to the q ua n ti ty of brandy that they needed to drink to wa rd oii the n ight ch ill w h i l e carry i n g o u t the i r s m u g gling operations. Perhaps one of the most revealing stories i s that of I a ban da de ,Ju an (Ju an 's ga ng). Th is Juan was a Galician who h ad been a mem ber of Until very recently, people o n both sides of the border were telling me that 'a Europe with out borders' was something they felt they would never see during their lifetime. The border is a reality of their lives that they have always known, and have known as a politico-adminis trati ve real i ty i mposed from ou tsi de. On ly a years ago it was nearly imposs i ble to h ave an hou r's converRation w i th anyone in these v i l l a g es without the subject of the border comi n g up. When they spoke oftheir past, when they spoke of th eir present, when they spoke of almost anything, the border was always there some where. Tod ay, however, the seemingly eternal vigilance of the border posts is no longer; th e border guards -sometimes brutal and some complained that the disappearance of the bor der would mean that his villages 'would lose their most important business and source of employment and wealth, which was smuggling'. Smuggling has all but disappeared, except for the movement of drugs such as heroine and cocaine, which most people regard as not at all like the 'clean trade' of the smuggling in the past. Another aspect of change is that neither economy is as insulated as before. This particu larly affects the Portuguese, who had far less competition with a closed border, which permit ted them to be less efficient than Spanish firms just over the border. For example, a man from one of the Portuguese border villages who owns his own small welding firm (he was trained as a welder in Germany, where he lived for a number of years) says he prefers to buy his material across the border in Galicia, not be cause the q u a l i ty is a ny bet ter, but s i m ply beca use he li nd::; the Sp:m i a rd::; to be 'more re::;pon::; i b lc' than h i s fel low cou n t rym en . H e say::; that t h e S pa n i a rd::; del iver w h e n they say they w i l l , u n l i ke the Po rtug·ue::;e, w h o don't even bothe r to deliver. He say::; you have to go to the i r shops in order to get w h at y o u want. H e a l ::;o co m pl a i n ed that when he recen tly expa nded h i s bus iness and neederl t o ta ke on two extra work ers, he was un able to find any young men in the Portugu ese vi l lages in the area w h o were wi l l ing to work a::; appren tice welders and lea rn the trade. He h ad no trou ble, however, in findi ng the two young men h e needed in the G a l ician v i l lage j u st ove r the border. The welde r's w i le poi nted out that now that her hu sband h a::; Span ish , rather than Portu gu ese assistants, 'even his Portu gu ese cli ents take him m ore serio usly', al tho ugh she added th at ::;orne peopl e at their village arc annoyed, 'because h avi ng hard-working Galicians coming every day shows up the Portuguese as being lazy' . More sinister were some ofthe rumours that were circulating in the Portuguese villages of the borderland shortly after border controls were removed i n 1992. One, which was true to a certain extent, was that Portuguese girls from poor families of the raia were being tricked i n to going to Gal ici a with the promise of a job, would then be drugged, kept prisoners at some roadside brothel and forced into prostitution. The other rumour, for which no evidence was ever produced, had it 56 that Spa n i a rds 'i n h i g·h-powered motorca rs' were co m i ng to Po rtuga l to kid n a p chi l d ren ' fur their organs'. Th e level of' hysteri a was such at one poi n t that th e pricRt ofthc Portu guese vi l lages to ld me that he had ::;topped h i s car -admi ttedly a M c rcede::;, but w ith Portuguese number-plates at a nother border v i l lage to talk w ith so me ch i l d re n , w hen h i s ca r was s uddenly s u rrou nd eel by angry v i l l agers armed with sticks. Luck i ly, the priest was recogn i sed in time.
Eight ce n tu ri es arc not w i ped away in a few ::;hort years. As my friend said : 'You may remove the door, but the doorframe remai ns.' While these borderland peopl e admi t that th eir rela tions w i th th ose on the other side arc now m u ch more fl u i d than i n the past, there is mais conf'i n.nqn .! nuis conf'ianza ('more trust'), it is still clea rly th e case that nati on al boundaries are markers of collective identity. Perhaps due to the fact th at on this section of the Portuguese Spani sh bo rder the concepts of 'nation' and 'state' coincide to a far greater extent than they do on the Basque and Catalan sections of the French-Spanish border. The nation-state, it would appear, is still 'the primary source of welfare, order, authority, legitimacy, identity and loyalty'. The inevitable conclusion would seem to be that the task of 'building Europe' or even a 'Europe of the regions' on this particular section of one ofEurope's 'internal borders' may not be as easy or as rapid as some may hope or others may fear.