Adverbios de lugar: aquí, ahí, allí

Arantxa Perales, Modern Language

This article was translated from Spanish by the author.

Adverbios de lugar, or “Adverbs of place,” are essential for locating actions, people, or objects in space, answering the question “where?” In Spanish, the demonstrative adverbs of place are: aquí, ahí, allí, acá, allá.

Recently, in my literature and advanced Spanish classes, we’ve been reading books, watching films, and having discussions about identity and belonging. Ni de aquí ni de allí (“Neither from here, nor from there”), Quan Zhou Wu, an Andalusian illustrator with parents of Chinese origin, tells us in her TEDx Talk. Her identity crisis began when, looking at herself in the mirror, she realized her features were different from those of her friends. She felt fully Spanish, so was she from aquí (Spain) or allí (China)? The same goes for Lucía and Xian, the protagonists of Arantxa Etxebarría’s film Chinas (2023), about two girls of Chinese origin who grow up in Spain and come to realize that their heritage, traditions, and features do not align with their sense of identity and place.

Or in my case, since I was born in the Basque Country to Valencian parents and raised in Barcelona, I was from allí, never belonging aquí (Barcelona), where I lived or ahí (San Sebastian) where I spent the summers, or allí (Valencia) where we spent Christmas with my cousins and grandparents. I didn´t identify as Basque, Catalan, or Valencian. So I adopted the Spanish overall identity when, as an adult, I lived and raised my children allí (Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Doha, Fontainebleau, and Hanover). I always felt from allí, wherever that was, never aquí.

What makes us feel like we belong to a place? Are we of the aquí (the present), or are we of the ahí (the past), or are we that thing allí that we would have liked to be (imperfect subjunctive)? We are from aquí and ahí and everywhere or from nowhere all at the same time. I, like so many others, am an orphan of adverbs of place. Am I from this place (the US) where I’ve lived for twelve years, or am I from the place where I was born (Spain), or am I from the other countries where I lived in between and raised my children? I am all: the present, past, and the subjunctive.

The writers of the Latin American Boom, just like Quan Zhou and we, the orphans of adverbs of place, felt that sense of orphanhood. Their identity crisis arose as they sought to define a distinct Latin American identity while moving away from regionalism and grappling with exile, political instability, and international success. They migrated to Barcelona, Paris, and London. This group of young writers formed a friendship and a bond that allowed them to belong and cling to a place, the aquí (that present), far from their origins, the ahí (that past), and all along they dreamed of an allí, a Latin American identity that they never achieved (the one they would have liked to have had—imperfect subjunctive). This search for their own identity was reflected in their work through formal experimentation and the “orphanhood” of previous literary models. The doubling or splitting of the self was a recurring theme in their narrative. Their works featured lonely characters in search of their true selves in the present and past; they seek the self that might have been, the self that will never be—neither aquí nor allí—that imperfect subjunctive; that mirage, that reflection, where they looked and thought they saw someone just like them. It wasn’t exactly their double, but rather how they would have liked it to be. What they saw through the looking glass was what they would have liked it to become.

Recently, the Spanish government announced measures to amend the immigration status of people who have been living and working illegally in the country. Now, illegal immigrants can reside aquí legally and have the same rights and obligations as all Spanish citizens. All those who left their home countries–allí–and came aquí in search of a better life can stay without fear. For them, a dream— always in the subjunctive—of a life they wished could have been different. But neither arriving nor residing legally means belonging. Papers don’t give you roots; the legal aquí doesn’t have to coincide with the emotional aquí. And so many of us who live where we weren’t born ask ourselves: Am I from aquí? Am I from allí? And sometimes we fantasize about an ahí, an in-between place, where we and our feelings can finally settle, where we feel neither out of place nor like strangers.

Every day and in every classroom at Milton, with students from so many different backgrounds, languages, and cultures, I am certain that aquí, ahí, or allí are not just adverbs of place; they are sensations. Feelings that have been experienced for centuries in a society like the United States, full of immigrant citizens or children of immigrants who came aquí from allí seeking opportunity and a better life. Long live the present, the past, and the subjunctive.

To conclude, I would like to mention the poet and fellow educator Juan Vicente Piqueras (Valencia, 1960), whom I met at a gathering at the Instituto Cervantes in Paris during my years living in Fontainebleau, France. We chatted and shared that sense of rootlessness, of belonging neither aquí nor allí. He wrote a poem about it, and aquí are a few verses:

“Adverbios de lugar” by Juan Vicente Piqueras

“Aquí” is where I am. Wherever I may be,

I am always “aquí” where you see me.

[...]

“aquí” I thirst to leave, thirst for “ahí”,

but “ahí” is the place where I can never be,

where I am impossible. Wherever I go,

wherever I arrive, it will be “aquí”

[...]

“Allí” is your “aquí”.

“Allí” it feels like a scream because that is

where it hurts you.

I want to be “allí”, where you are,

you “aquí”, or better yet, the two of us

“allí”, far away, together

because what is alive is what is together.

“Alli” is the love that isn’t “aquí”.

[...]

“Ahí” is salvation, the mirage

born of the thirst to be aquí.

“Ahí” we would truly be happy,

where your “aqui” and my “ahí” would be

together,

I am “aqui” and you are “ahí” and “allí”