I not only lived physically away from my native land, but the values and critical judgments of those closest to me became stranger and stranger.

And it is because a series of elements in Spanish life which operate today the same way as they did in the times of Blanco White made obvious my relationship with him, based on a similarity in Spain's condition.

As I began to discover my own truth and endeavored to possess it with CLARITY, I became more and more alienated from that which my companions held, or professed to hold.

The writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent.

I not only lived physically away from my native land, but the values and critical judgments of those closest to me became stranger and stranger.

And with each day that passed, the gulf broadened and my isolation became more accentuated. In such a situation, the discovery that my experience was not unique, that it had also been that of other Spanish intellectuals, became very important for me.

Marks of Identity is, among other things, the expression of the process of alienation in a contemporary intellectual with respect to his own country.