In my new book Masquerade, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality dominates the location in which the story is set: Andalucía. On the one side is Andrés, a respected businessman and technology visionary, mixing in aristocratic and elite circles. On the other is Leandro, a spirited and wild gypsy, one of the Romani who live by the ocean in their own, time-forgotten encampment.

Luz, the heroine of the book, has been brought up to be like Andrés. Her family has long-avoided any involvement with the gypsies, and she has led a privileged life and has been brought up to be respectable and ladylike; in many ways, Andrés’s contemporary. And yet, when she meets the gypsy Leandro she cannot help but be intrigued by how the other half live.

Her mother’s former maid Agustina warns her: ‘Like most people who are ignorant of those tribes and their ways, you are attracted to them. And I know you, Doña Luz … You find them mysterious and romantic, yes? They have the beguiling scent of the unknown with a spicy undercurrent that spells danger. You are young and the young are often foolish … I trust you are not so.’

The word ‘tribe’ is imbued with meaning. An important element is that of belonging; this is something that keeps Leandro attached to his tribe. But what really unites the tribe is a shared belief in a way of living: an ethos. And how can Luz fail to be intrigued by the gypsies’ passionate, liberated approach to life?

Luz has a keen, enquiring mind, and in that sense she is like Andrés, who was once a student of anthropology. He explains to Luz that he travelled the world to spend time with different tribes, learning their ways, from Peru to North America reservations to aboriginal grounds in Australia and beyond. He lived in the Naga Hills of northeast India with secluded hilltop tribes whose traditions were ancient, and with the Kombai clan in Papua New Guinea. He explains:

‘I was a “kwai”, which means spirit or ghost but it’s also a term used to describe an outsider. So I was regarded with suspicion for a while, until I was befriended by the chief’s son… Suffice to say I was finally accepted into that clan, but not before one of them accused me of being a Khakhua-Kuma, a man who practises witchcraft… Cannibalism was still carried out by the Kombai as a form of tribal punishment for male witches. If the chief’s son hadn’t defended me I could have been eaten.’

Andrés tells the story with mischief glinting in his eyes – ‘Though I’m glad I escaped the pot, I think my flesh would have been rather delicious, don’t you?’ he says to Luz. But this does not belie how seriously he takes the field of anthropology. To be a ‘kwai’ is a difficult things; most people prefer to belong, and will follow the rules of a tribe in order to do so. But which tribe?

So many tribes exist. As Andrés puts it: ‘We’re all tribal. Nations, families, blood ties, class…’Luz is a woman; one tribe. She is a writer; another tribe. She is of the de Ruedas, an aristocratic Spanish family – and yet she also has English blood in her veins; two, sometimes contradictory, tribes.

Contradiction: this is problematic for the modern person. For the remote hilltop tribes Andrés lived with in India, it is easy to follow the single path; none other exists. But in Andalucía in the 1970s, all of the characters face choices and mixed allegiances.

The entrepreneur Seth Godin offers perhaps the best definition of a tribe in his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us: ‘A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.’The word ‘leader’ strikes me as very important.

Take the gypsies, for example, which Luz finds so compelling. They are not a co-operative; they are a tribe united under leadership of the queen, Marujita. Each member of the tribe must bow to her rule, whether they agree with it or not – Leandro included. And who is to say that a leader will always be just and kind? In Marujita’s case, they call her Il Diabolica for good reason; she is cruel and thirsty for vengeance.

The difficulty with the tribe is keeping a sense of individualism. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said:

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

The question is, will Luz and Andrés and Leandro have the courage to stand alone within their tribes, to ‘own themselves’? Which will win out: the tribe, or the individual?