Framed under the umbrella of backwardness, another topic that offers a comprehensive view of Galician society [1], and often presented as one of the main causes of this, the notion of the individualistic Galician finds its origin in the negative perception of the rural world, its dispersed habitat and the most common form of ownership and management of land in Galicia, the “minifundio” (smallholder), an issue to which we will devote an article soon. In fact, the oldest reference we find in the Galician press to our natural individualism, published in 1851, is along these lines. In an article in the fortnightly El Eco de Galicia, the occupation of the countryside is presented as a problem that can be explained by the “material individualism” that characterises Galician villages, and it is stated that “this withdrawn solidarity (…) is the basis of the Galician character and the exact and valid expression of its withdrawal into amalgamation, fusion, and mutual cooperation” [2].

Over the years, the cliché of individualism has shown its strength in resisting all criticism, but also in its ability to adapt. In a historically rural country like ours, the prejudices associated with the rural world ended up being applied to the whole of Galician society. This is also what happened with the notion of backwardness. The analysis of the press is usually a good thermometer of the prevalence of clichés and commonplaces. In the last two centuries, analysts of different sign [3], members of political and cultural elites across the ideological spectrum [4] and also members of the common society have resorted to the natural individualism of the Galicians. And they did so for the most disparate uses.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this concept was used to celebrate the merit of the Federación Agropecuaria del Norte Galaico, an association of farmers from the north of Lugo that “has had the virtuality of defeating Galician individualism, so deeply rooted in the farmer, and convince him that his improvement and his future lie in the association”[6]. One hundred years later it served to celebrate the successes of the Xacobeo cycling team, which in the 2010 Vuelta Ciclista a España was able to “banish the cliché of Galician individualism, of pathological dispersion” [7]. In recent decades, Galician individualism has been placed as a handicap in the creation of competitive companies [8] or as an explanatory cause of the crisis of the naval sector in Ferrol [9]. These are just a few examples of a list that would be endless. Even the current president of the Xunta de Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, stated the following in an interview for La Voz de Galicia, a few months after his first victory in the 2009 elections: “I think Galicians are very individualistic. Our social structure, the way we understand life, shows it. We like to live in a dispersed way. The Germans do too, but they have a finished, ordered country and we don’t.” [10]

Times have changed, wills have changed. The country is not very similar to how it was portrayed in the publications of the 19th century, or what the Galicianists studied during the Franco regime. However, the quotes we collect over two centuries sound very recent. That’s the strength of the cliché. But our responsibility is to confront it through study, and history provides us with many tools to do so.