Enduring art is usually associated with conflict and conspiracy—art engaged in a plot against itself. This is certainly the case with Galician literature, written in a minority language spoken in the northwest corner of Spain by a population forced to accept the language's secondary status.

That wasn't always the case. In the Middle Ages our language—virtually the same as Portuguese—flourished politically and culturally. It was the language of the people and of the government; excellent Galician poetry was written in the Provençal style. Even King Alfonso X of Castile—dubbed "The Wise"—wrote his Songs to the Virgin Mary in Galician. At the end of the fifteenth century, however, Queen Isabel I removed the Galician nobility, abolished its institutions, severed Galicia's ties to Portugal, and outlawed the Galician language. Thus the Dark Centuries began.

Unsurprisingly, the Spanish Civil War was another major setback. The 1930s were followed by new decades of silence and repression—not a single book was published for fifteen years. Intellectuals were assassinated, imprisoned, threatened, or forced into exile so that Galician culture only managed to survive in Latin America—a bleak time.

Today, Galician literature is going strong. The arrival of democracy and political autonomy in the late 70s gave Galician literature a new impulse which can still be seen today. One thousand books in Galician are published every year, including fiction and non-fiction. Manuel Rivas' novel The Carpenter's Pencil has sold over 90,000 copies, and many other Galician authors are being translated into other European languages. From the Beginning of the Sea, an anthology of contemporary Galician fiction, for example, has just been published in the UK. The literature is widely popular in Galicia too, of course. Five years ago, a Galician newspaper sold a selection of 120 classic and contemporary books. 50,000 copies of each were sold—that's a total of six million books sold in just a few months for a population of only two and a half million.

Surprisingly, there is a new—and large—market for these books. Our new writers are urban and cosmopolitan; our thrillers, sci-fi, erotica, and literary fiction are usually written in straightforward, streamlined prose. With this gain in popularity, however, the literature has lost its original spark and daring. In other words, the newest wave of Galician literature lacks the courage to "plot against itself." Writers have agents and pay attention to their public image, win prizes and lecture at the Centers of Galician Studies found in universities around the world, as if they were ambassadors spreading the word rather than embattled literary dissidents.

The question is: What space is Galician literature supposed to occupy when its writers are branded as foreigners by Spanish critics and academics—the same critics and academics who, paradoxically, welcome Latin Americans as their fellow countrymen? Where do we fit in? Where does a culture belong when its art is ambitious and cosmopolitan and its language constitutes a peripheral "subculture"?

What, I have to ask, is the future of Galician literature?