Abstract:

Policing the borders of the patchwork of communities that made up Spain’s polycentric global empire placed an unprecedented level of strain on processes of recognition and identification, on ‘señas de identidad’: in parallel the figure of the wandering beggar was reframed, no longer speaking to universal human community but rather a threatening foreign otherness. While Spain was defined largely from the outside, attempts within to locate ideal subjecthood foundered on a hybridity that was political, social and cultural. This paper will reflect on processes of incorporation, naturalisation and conversion, assimilation, appropriation and exclusion, on walls and bridges.