The TikToker Ainara Quesada shared on social media a reflection about her experience of having two nationalities. Ainara, whose mother is Spanish and father is Cuban, has opened up to her followers about what it means to belong to two different cultures and how this has influenced her identity.
"I have a graduation and while I'm at it, I'm going to tell you what it feels like to have two different nationalities," Ainara begins in her video. The young woman explains that she has always felt like she doesn't completely belong to any place, a common feeling among those who grow up in a bicultural environment. "Well, the truth is that you never feel like you're from anywhere, you're never enough from either side," she stated.
Ainara also recounts the difficulties she has faced in identifying herself as Basque in Spain and as Cuban in Cuba. "When I have interacted here and said that I am Basque, I always have to prove how Basque I am, as if it were an exam, you know. And when I have gone to Cuba and told them that my father is Cuban and that I feel a special connection with Cuba, it's always like they laugh at you, they understand as if if you have never been here, you are not Cuban," she says.
His connection with Cuba deepened last year, when after 12 years without visiting the island, Ainara returned and experienced a sense of belonging that she had never felt before. "And the connection that I felt had never happened to me in my life, for the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere," she confesses.
"But I will always be a good tourist even though everyone at home already knew that the girl had turned out more Latin than anything else," she added with a laugh.
"If you ask me where I feel, obviously I will always say that I am Basque because it is here where I have grown up, where I was born, where my other family is from, and I love it. But since I returned to Cuba, it's like I felt there is a part of my heart there," she noted in her words that have enchanted the internet and closed by thanking her parents for giving her "the privilege, the pleasure of belonging to two different places."
Ainara has also told the romantic love story of her parents, currently separated, who met in Cuba in 1995 when her Spanish mother traveled to the island on vacation.
In addition to sharing her personal story, Ainara has won over her followers with videos of her dancing with her Cuban grandmother.
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