Many people will empathise with Antoine, the main protagonist in Sartre’s seminal work Nausea. What once felt normal and mundane can start to feel distinctly unusual. Existentially, our surroundings can start to appear differently to us and our perception changes. This can take place not only in the individual but also collectively; and collectively people’s perceptions of Europe appear to be changing.
The nation states of old are already losing sway to forces such as globalisation but, in antithesis to this, Europe is becoming more hyperlocal, with a new emphasis on cultures that we now realise that we must not lose. These conditions have led to a new drive to reinstate the historic nations of Europe, who had lost their ability to express themselves and to make decisions for themselves. Hence, the British are ever more strongly becoming the Welsh, the Scottish, the English and the Irish; the Belgians are increasingly the Flemish and Walloons, the Spaniard is replaced by the Basque, the Catalan and the Galician, and yet all within the wider concept of being European.
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