In the summer of 2025, I traveled to Galicia, Spain to learn about the culture and walk the Camino de Santiago. My connection to the area came from my grandmother who was born in Puerto Rico, but claimed her family was originally from this North West region of Spain. The project’s name, El Camino via Turtle Island, reflects my starting point in America, how land, story, and identity extend across generations, and what it means to walk through a lineage shaped by both colonization and connection.

We often speak of culture as moving in one direction: Spain conquered the Americas. Yet when I arrived in Galicia, it was clear that culture flows both ways. Spain today is deeply influenced by Latin America. As someone who identifies with that mixture, I began to see this exchange as an evolving ecology rather than a fixed hierarchy. This deepened my understanding that all things—culture, gender, identity, power—exist on a spectrum rather than in opposition.

In walking the Camino—an ancient Catholic pilgrimage that today attracts people of all backgrounds and faiths—I found peace within my own tensions around culture and belonging. Surrounded by pilgrims from many nations, I could see the diversity of language and cultural norms they way I might see a variety of plants in a field—every one important and beautiful, but also precarious if not held in mutual respect and balance.