A Peoples’ identity processes are reaffirmed through the assimilation of its history and culture. As a Valencian I have always felt restless; I have the feeling of not belonging to this land despite feeling very close to it.

These same doubts were expressed by the writer Joan Fuster in his book “Nosaltres els valencians” when he asserted that “The Valencian, when he thinks of his entity as a people, finds himself uncertain: he senses that it is neither meat nor fish” (Fuster 1962: 15).”

Looking into the history of the Valencian Community, we observe that since our foundation as a Kingdom in 1238 we have been constituted as a sum of Catalans and Aragonese, two defined identities that forged a new feeling of belonging to the territory due to the implantation of the regional code of laws. A few centuries later, in the constitution of the Spanish state, while a strong national identity was being established, discordant voices began to emerge regarding the prevailing centrality; first with La Renaixença, which postulated a literary and cultural singularity. But especially from the 60s of the 20th century, and thanks to the aforementioned essay by Fuster, which promoted a break with this centrality, and which brought with it a great polarization of feelings regarding who we are. Such a need for reaffirmation was addressed by the sociologist Joan Francesc Mira in “Sobre la nació dels valencians”, arguing that “the Valencian identity is right now an irregular construction, globally weak and dispersed, except when it is specified in belonging to a society defined by a name and a territory for more than seven and a half centuries ” (Mira 1997: 96). These premises are the starting point of Fang, a project that approaches the territory as an engine to find symbols that represent what our character is, what identifies us in cultural, economic or historical terms; a reality that is indefinite, dual, and sometimes contradictory. In order to do so, I have chosen several places in the Valencian Community where to look for images that dialogue with each other, highlighting these ideas in some cases and trying to resolve them in others.

Fang is a representation of the most characteristic features of the Valencian identity through its territory.

Ivan on IG