The social crisis and the nation-based social reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia of the late Twentieth Century sparked a resemantization of a series of collective, especially ethno-national identities. In response to a newly established paradigm of Croatian-ness, a regional social and political mobilization occurred in the westernmost Croatian region of Istria. The article interprets ‘Istrianity’ as an articulation of political and ideological otherness of the periphery in relation to the center, as a kind of resistance to what being “Croat” begins to signify.