La Voz de Galicia – November 9, 2025 →
It’s curious, because when I hear my mother speak in Galician or in Spanish, I feel that they are two different persons. Depending on the language she chooses in each moment, often without realizing it, her way of expressing herself shifts: her voice, her gestures, her intonation… She becomes someone so different that, even today, she can’t have a long conversation with me in Galician; the moment she realizes that it’s me on the other end of the phone, and not one of her sisters, she suddenly switches to Spanish, and there’s no going back. Because the mother who raised me speaks Spanish, and the sister of her sisters speaks Galician, the Galician of A Bola. And in the same Maruxa, there are two different women depending on the language she speaks.
Over the years, I’ve learned that, for better or for worse, I inherited this from her. The Galician-speaking Cristina is different from the Spanish-speaking Cristina; we express ourselves differently, even though we are the same person, and it isn’t always easy to speak in a language that isn’t the usual one for that relationship. English is simpler in that regard, because for me it’s an adopted language I learned as an adult. And even though Xan and I have been inhabiting it for two decades, it would feel ridiculous for us to speak English in private, because it isn’t the language of our relationship… Yet sometimes it’s also complicated to speak Galician with those who, like my mother, have unconsciously decided to speak Spanish with you (the eternal diglossia!).
I tend to wonder which parts of ourselves remain hidden when we switch languages, or when we shift registers within the same language; what we want to show, or hide, when we choose to express ourselves one way or another. Are we truly what we speak, or does what we speak make us who we are?
