"The Spaniards’ ways of being is different from ours": discourses of national identification in the border of Alentejo

This article tackles the discourses of national identification produced by the inhabitants of a village close to the border between Portugal and Spain on the Guadiana river, in order to shed light on the persistence of the Castilians/Spaniards as the main collective partner, the “significant other” in the construction and reproduction, through difference, of Portuguese identity. Based on ethnographic materials collected approximately in the last two decades, it shows that, in the context under study, the representation of the personality of the Portuguese people emerges out of a structure of contrasts in relation to the representation of the Spaniards’ personality. Similarly, the contrast to the Castilians/Spaniards is the main leitmotif from which the Portuguese identity has been built over time.