The article revises contemporary Spanish and Galician literary history and proposes a postnational critique of the Spanish canons (Spanish, Galician, Basque, etc.), which continue to be monolingual and therefore nationalist. By studying the work of Pardo Bazan, the article argues that even when the work of a writer is fully assimilated into a specific canon (the state canon of Spanish literature written in Spanish), the traces of the other language and geography (Galicia/n) remain and, from their marginality, continue to define and defer her 'originary identity and language' – Galician – which cannot be captured or canonized in nationalist terms; neither Galician nor Spanish. The article concludes that Pardo Bazan's 'identity' and language, which are translational and transnational, point to a new geography that defies the (Spanish) state and therefore posits the secondary nature of any state reappropriation as the departure point for any new postnational history of literature.El articulo examina las hist...