At first, the answer was simple. I’m Spanish, I live in Switzerland. Two facts, with no room for ambiguity. But over time, something changes that’s difficult to explain precisely. It’s not that you stop being Spanish. It’s just that Switzerland starts to take up a space it didn’t have before.
There comes a moment – hard to pinpoint exactly when – when you realise you know this place better than the neighbourhood where you grew up. You know how the Gemeinde works, you have an opinion on cantonal referendums, and you get upset by the local news. And when you go back to Spain to visit, there are things that strike you as strange: the noise, the pace, the way people manage their time. You no longer quite fit in there, but you’re not entirely from here either.
The tricky thing is that this process has no official name or form. Psychology calls it bicultural identity, but that sounds far too academic for what it actually is: one day you refer to Geneva or Zurich as ‘my city’ without it seeming strange to you. And at the same time, you carry on putting olive oil on your salad and getting annoyed when someone suggests paying only their share.
Many people in this group have been here for ten, fifteen or twenty years. The question is a specific one: when did you realise it?