On national identity
I remember them well, those steep Porto streets, a friendly confeitaria on every corner. I remember reading in the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal, facing a gorgeous view of the Douro river and interrupted by the occasional peacock. I remember a university that taught me little but put me into contact with many people to have dinner with, and a nightlife circuit small enough that, after a year or two, I was on speaking terms with the owners and regulars of most clubs in town. I remember people who, though far from welcoming or outgoing, did have a certain warmth to them which made living in Porto seem safe, made it seem like I belonged there, and like life would never change much.
Wine, cakes and the impossibility of walking downtown without running into someone you know — that’s what Portugal means to me now. A small, distant country where even the scandals have a certain sheen of affection to them — the names of politicians corrupt or incompetent so familiar that, whenever a new story breaks, one takes it as one would the shenanigans of a funny alcoholic uncle; right-wing and left-wing commentators on TV joking around, occasionally getting a bit enthused in their arguments but never letting you forget that, at the end of the day, they come from the same universities, frequent the same circles and will probably go out for a friendly beer once the show is over. Not all of this idyll that I am drawing up is untrue.
There’s never been a time when I haven’t been thinking about national identity: growing up the son of Germans on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, I naturally adopted my parent’s penchant for comparing and contrasting the two cultures. Trying to learn about the Portuguese way of life, I was also trying, of course, to integrate, to make said culture my own. Did this make me more susceptible to noticing claims of “us Portuguese are like this” or “the problem with this country is that”? Very likely, but I still believe us Portuguese are more obsessed with drawing up a national identity, positive or negative, than most European nations. Something to do with being one of the most clearly defined countries on the continent, sure — language, borders and religion have remained constant throughout the centuries — but also, perhaps, a need to affirm oneself in a context where one is literally peripheral, to build an image because the outside world doesn’t provide one. Some of my friends disagree, but I still think that, outside of regions with Portuguese immigrant populations, there is no real consensual stereotype of what we are like.
And now I live in London — a city full of immigrants, where these discussions are a popular ice- breaker on dates and in parties. What is it really like in Moscow? Oh, you’re from Nigeria? I’ve always wanted to go to Japan. Sometimes, in hushed tones, we even comment on that most exotic and insular of communities, glimpsed in offices and on television, the English.
It would be foolish to say we’re all the same. A country’s history shapes its culture, its culture shapes its inhabitants, and a national identity does result. Not in an essentialist way, of course, and there are many factors, including class and the rural/urban divide, that complicate these kinds of categorizations — it’s valid enough to say that persons living in London, New York and Berlin probably have more in common with each other, culturally and politically, than they do with most of the rest of their respective countries. For my own part, though, I’m less interested in that than I am in the conflation between space and time. How much of anyone’s opinions on what countries are like is based on what their personal experiences were when they lived there? How easy is it to blame a bad break-up on the city it occurred in, falling in with the wrong crowd on the country said crowd hailed from?
It is no wonder that my memories of Porto are this rose tinted: I went to university there. The images that the city conjures up — long hours spent chatting away in cafés, epic booze-filled dinners, rides coming back from the club at five in the morning — aren’t particular to a geographic location, they are particular to being young and having no responsibilities to speak of. I can’t return to the Eden I miss so much by hopping on a plane; I’d have to enlist a time machine. And while Portugal’s political problems may seem almost benign compared to reality in the United Kingdom, where every struggle seems as hopeless as it is deadly serious, and where the problems of the world (terror attacks, rising fascism, refugee crisis, Donald Trump — take your pick) feel somehow much scarier and much more real than they do in Portugal (despite the UK’s much-vaunted Splendid Isolation, and Portugal’s eagerness to be a part of the world), one should never forget that, while the cultural establishment entertains itself with gaffes and reshuffles, the country had and has real problems.
This wasn’t something I needed to remind myself of before I left — seeing my friends struggle to find a job, seeing a whole generation graduate into unemployment, meant the Eurozone crisis was more than an academic matter for us. And on one of my first returns to Porto after leaving for London, my friend’s behaviour seemed imbued with a sort of desperate hedonism that brought to mind the Weimar Republic novels I was reading at the time. People appeared to be constantly drunk, the line between fun drunk and mean drunk eradicating before our eyes.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the reality I’d be coming back to, either. Things have calmed down, in their lives as in the country. People are paired up, somewhat gainfully employed. The romanticism of my university years hasn’t turned into a nightmare — it’s just given way to the reality of day-to-day adult life. The commutes are shorter than in London, but at the end of the day they’ll have a quick after work pint and head home the same as the rest of us.
Even if it’s in better weather. And with better food waiting for them. And furthermore….
