Prehistory and antiquity The oldest attestation of human presence in Galicia has been found in the Eirós Cave, in the municipality of
Triacastela, which has preserved animal remains and
Neanderthal stone objects from the
Middle Paleolithic. The earliest culture to have left significant architectural traces is the
Megalithic culture, which expanded along the western European coasts during the
Neolithic and
Calcolithic eras. Thousands of Megalithic
tumuli are distributed throughout the country, mostly along the coastal areas. Within each tumulus is a stone burial chamber known locally as
anta (
dolmen), frequently preceded by a corridor. Galicia was later influenced by the Bell
Beaker culture. Its rich mineral deposits of
tin and
gold led to the development of
Bronze Age metallurgy, and the commerce of bronze and gold items all along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe. A shared elite culture evolved in this region during the
Atlantic Bronze Age. '' houses in eastern Galicia, an evolved form of the
Iron Age local
roundhouses Dating from the end of the
Megalithic era, and up to the
Bronze Age, numerous stone carvings (
petroglyphs) are found in open air. They usually represent
cup and ring marks,
labyrinths,
deer, Bronze Age weapons, and riding and hunting scenes. Large numbers of these stone carvings can be found in the Rías Baixas regions, at places such as Tourón and
Campo Lameiro. , an Iron Age fortified settlement The
Castro culture ('Culture of the Castles') developed during the
Iron Age, and flourished during the second half of the first millennium BC. It is usually considered a local evolution of the Atlantic Bronze Age, with later developments and influences overlapping into the Roman era. Geographically, it corresponds to the people the Romans called
Gallaeci, which were composed of a large series of nations or tribes, among them the
Artabri,
Bracari,
Limici,
Celtici,
Albiones and
Lemavi. They were capable fighters:
Strabo described them as the most difficult foes the Romans encountered in conquering
Lusitania, while
Appian mentions their warlike spirit, noting that the women bore their weapons side by side with their men, frequently preferring death to captivity. According to
Pomponius Mela all the inhabitants of the coastal areas were
Celtic people. head warrior from Rubiás,
Bande. Now in Museo Provincial de Ourense. Gallaeci lived in
castros. These were usually annular forts, with one or more concentric earthen or stony walls, with a trench in front of each one. They were frequently located on hills, or in seashore cliffs and peninsulas. Some well known
castros can be found on the seashore at: Fazouro, Santa Tegra, Baroña, and O Neixón; and inland at:
San Cibrao de Lás, Borneiro, Castromao, and Viladonga. Some other distinctive features, such as temples, baths, reservoirs, warrior statues, and decorative carvings have been found associated with this culture, together with rich gold and metalworking traditions. The Roman legions first entered the area under
Decimus Junius Brutus in 137–136 BC, but the country was only incorporated into the
Roman Empire by the time of
Augustus (29 BC – 19 BC). The Romans were interested in Galicia mainly for its mineral resources, most notably gold. Under Roman rule, most Galician hillforts began to be – sometimes forcibly – abandoned, and
Gallaeci served frequently in the Roman army as auxiliary troops. Romans brought new technologies, new travel routes, new forms of organizing property, and a new language:
Latin. The
Roman Empire established its control over Galicia through camps (
castra) as
Aquis Querquennis, Ciadella camp or
Lucus Augusti (
Lugo), roads (
viae) and monuments as the lighthouse known as
Tower of Hercules, in
Corunna, but the remoteness and lesser interest of the country since the 2nd century AD, when the gold mines stopped being productive, led to a lesser degree of
Romanization. In the 3rd century, it was made a province, under the name
Gallaecia, which included also northern Portugal,
Asturias, and a large section of what today is known as
Castile and León.
Early Middle Ages , king of Galicia, and
Martin of Braga, from an 1145 manuscript of Martin's
Formula Vitae Honestae, now in the Austrian National Library. The original work was dedicated to King Miro with the header "To King Miro, the most glorious and calm, the pious, famous for his Catholic faith" In the early 5th century, the deep crisis suffered by the
Roman Empire allowed different tribes of Central Europe (
Suebi,
Vandals and
Alani) to cross the
Rhine and penetrate the rule on 31 December 406. Its progress towards the
Iberian Peninsula forced the Roman authorities to establish a treaty (
foedus) by which the Suebi would settle peacefully and govern Galicia as imperial allies. So, from 409 Galicia was taken by the Suebi, forming the first medieval kingdom to be created in Europe, in 411, even before the fall of the Roman Empire, being also the first Germanic kingdom to mint coinage in Roman lands. During this period a
Briton colony and bishopric (see
Mailoc) was established in Northern Galicia (
Britonia), probably as
foederati and allies of the Suebi. In 585, the
Visigothic
King Leovigild invaded the Suebic kingdom of Galicia and defeated it, bringing it under Visigoth control. Later the
Muslims invaded Spain (711), but the Arabs and
Moors never managed to have any real control over most of Galicia, which was later incorporated by king
Alfonso I into the expanding Christian
Kingdom of Asturias, usually known as Gallaecia or Galicia (
Yillīqiya and
Galīsiya) by Muslim chroniclers, as well as by many European contemporaries. This era consolidated Galicia as a Christian society which spoke a
Romance language. During the next century Galician noblemen took northern Portugal, conquering
Porto in 868 and
Coimbra in 871, thus freeing what was considered the southernmost city of ancient Galicia.
High and Low Middle Ages interior of the
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela In the 9th century, the rise of the cult of the
Apostle James in
Santiago de Compostela gave Galicia particular symbolic importance among Christians, an importance it would hold throughout the
Reconquista. As the Middle Ages went on, Santiago became a major pilgrim destination and the
Way of Saint James (Camiño de Santiago) a major pilgrim road, a route for the propagation of
Romanesque art and the words and music of the
troubadors. During the 10th and 11th centuries, a period during which Galician nobility become related to the royal family, Galicia was at times headed by its own
native kings, while
Vikings (locally known as
Leodemanes or
Lordomanes) occasionally raided the coasts. The Towers of
Catoira (Pontevedra) were built as a system of fortifications to prevent and stop the Viking raids on Santiago de Compostela. In 1063,
Ferdinand I of Castile divided his realm among his sons, and the Kingdom of Galicia was granted to
Garcia II of Galicia. In 1072, it was forcibly annexed by Garcia's brother
Alfonso VI of León; from that time Galicia was united with the
Kingdom of León under the same monarchs. In the 13th century
Alfonso X of Castile standardized the Castilian language (i.e. Spanish) and made it the language of court and government. Nevertheless, in his Kingdom of Galicia the
Galician language was the only language spoken, and the most used in government and legal uses, as well as in
literature. (13th century) During the 14th and 15th centuries, the progressive distancing of the kings from Galician affairs left the kingdom in the hands of the local knights, counts, and bishops, who frequently fought each other to increase their fiefs, or simply to plunder the lands of others. At the same time, the deputies of the Kingdom in the
Cortes stopped being called. The Kingdom of Galicia, slipping away from the control of the King, responded with a century of fiscal insubordination. On the other hand, the lack of an effective royal justice system in the Kingdom led to the social conflict known as the
Guerras Irmandiñas ('Wars of the brotherhoods'), when leagues of peasants and burghers, with the support of several knights, noblemen, and under legal protection offered by the remote king, toppled many of the castles of the Kingdom and briefly drove the noblemen into Portugal and Castile. Soon after, in the late 15th century, in the dynastic conflict between
Isabella I of Castile and
Joanna La Beltraneja, part of the Galician aristocracy supported Joanna. After Isabella's victory, she initiated an administrative and political reform which the chronicler
Jeronimo Zurita defined as "doma del Reino de Galicia": 'It was then when the taming of Galicia began, because not just the local lords and knights, but all the people of that nation were the ones against the others very bold and warlike'. These reforms, while establishing a local government and tribunal (the
Real Audiencia del Reino de Galicia), and bringing the nobleman under submission, also brought most Galician monasteries and institutions under Castilian control, in what has been criticized as a process of centralisation. At the same time the kings began to call the
Xunta or Cortes of the Kingdom of Galicia, an assembly of deputies or representatives of the cities of the Kingdom, to ask for monetary and military contributions. This assembly soon developed into the voice and legal representation of the Kingdom, and the depositary of its will and laws.
Early Modern The modern period of the
Kingdom of Galicia began with the defeat of some of the most powerful Galician lords, such as Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor, called
Pedro Madruga, and Rodrigo Henriquez Osorio, at the hands of the Castilian armies sent to Galicia between the years 1480 and 1486.
Isabella I of Castile, considered a usurper by many Galician nobles, defeated all armed resistance and definitively established the royal power of the Castilian monarchy. Fearing a general revolt, the monarchs ordered the banishing of the rest of the great lords like Pedro de Bolaño, Diego de Andrade, or Lope Sánchez de Moscoso, among others. The establishment of the
Santa Hermandad in 1480, and the
Real Audiencia del Reino de Galicia in 1500—a tribunal and executive body directed by the
Governor-
Captain General as a direct representative of the King—implied initially the submission of the Kingdom to the Crown, after a century of unrest and fiscal insubordination. As a result, from 1480 to 1520 the Kingdom of Galicia contributed more than 10% of the total earnings of the
Crown of Castille, including the Americas, well over its economic relevance. Like the rest of Spain, the 16th century was marked by population growth up to 1580, when the simultaneous wars with the Netherlands, France, and England hampered Galicia's Atlantic commerce, which consisted mostly in the exportation of sardines, wood, and some cattle and wine. In the late years of the 15th century the written form of the Galician language began a slow decline as it was increasingly replaced by Spanish, which would culminate in the
Séculos Escuros "the Dark Centuries" of the language, roughly from the 16th century through to the mid-18th century, when written Galician almost completely disappeared except for private or occasional uses but the spoken language remained the common language of the people in the villages and even the cities. , heroine of the defense of
A Coruña during the English
siege of 1589 From that moment Galicia, which participated to a minor extent in the American expansion of the
Spanish Empire, found itself at the center of the Atlantic wars fought by Spain against the French and the Protestant powers of England and the Netherlands, whose
privateers attacked the coastal areas, but major assaults were not common as the coastline was difficult and the harbors easily defended. The most famous assaults were upon the city of Vigo by
Sir Francis Drake in 1585 and 1589, and the siege of
A Coruña in 1589 by the
English Armada. Galicia also suffered occasional slave raids by
Barbary pirates, but not as frequently as the Mediterranean coastal areas. The most famous Barbary attack was the bloody sack of the town of
Cangas in 1617. At the time, the king's petitions for money and troops became more frequent, due to the human and economic exhaustion of Castile; the
Junta of the Kingdom of Galicia (the local
Cortes or
representative assembly) was initially receptive to these petitions, raising large sums, accepting the conscription of the men of the kingdom, and even commissioning a new naval squadron which was sustained with the incomes of the Kingdom. , 23 October 1702 After the rupture of the wars with
Portugal and
Catalonia, the
Junta changed its attitude, this time due to the exhaustion of Galicia, now involved not just in naval or oversea operations, but also in an exhausting war with the Portuguese, war which produced thousands of casualties and refugees and was heavily disturbing to the local economy and commerce. So, in the second half of the 17th century the
Junta frequently denied or considerably reduced the initial petitions of the monarch, and though the tension did not rise to the levels experienced in Portugal or Catalonia, there were frequent urban mutinies and some voices even asked for the secession of the Kingdom of Galicia.
Late Modern and Contemporary on 16 January 1809 During the
Peninsular War the successful uprising of the local people against the new French authorities, together with the support of the
British Army, limited the occupation to six months in 1808–1809. During the pre-war period the Supreme Council of the Kingdom of Galicia (
Junta Suprema del Reino de Galicia), auto-proclaimed interim sovereign in 1808, was the sole government of the country and mobilized near 40,000 men against the invaders. The
1833 territorial division of Spain put a formal end to the Kingdom of Galicia, unifying Spain into a single centralized monarchy. Instead of seven provinces and a regional administration, Galicia was reorganized into the current four provinces. Although it was recognized as a "historical region", that status was strictly honorific. In reaction,
nationalist and
federalist movements arose. The
liberal General
Miguel Solís Cuetos led a
separatist coup attempt in 1846 against the
authoritarian regime of
Ramón María Narváez. Solís and his forces were defeated at the
Battle of Cacheiras, 23 April 1846, and the survivors, including Solís himself, were shot. They have taken their place in Galician memory as the Martyrs of Carral or simply the Martyrs of Liberty. Defeated on the military front, Galicians turned to culture. The
Rexurdimento focused on the recovery of the Galician language as a vehicle of social and cultural expression. Among the writers associated with this movement are
Rosalía de Castro,
Manuel Murguía,
Manuel Leiras Pulpeiro, and
Eduardo Pondal. In the early 20th century came another turn toward nationalist politics with
Solidaridad Gallega (1907–1912) modeled on
Solidaritat Catalana in
Catalonia. Solidaridad Gallega failed, but in 1916
Irmandades da Fala (Brotherhood of the Language) developed first as a cultural association but soon as a full-blown nationalist movement.
Vicente Risco and
Ramón Otero Pedrayo were outstanding cultural figures of this movement, and the magazine
Nós ('Us'), founded in 1920, its most notable cultural institution,
Lois Peña Novo the outstanding political figure. The
Second Spanish Republic was declared in 1931. During the republic, the
Partido Galeguista (PG) was the most important of a shifting collection of
Galician nationalist parties. Following a referendum on a
Galician Statute of Autonomy, Galicia was granted the status of an autonomous region. Galicia was spared the worst of the fighting in that war: it was one of the areas where the initial coup attempt at the outset of the war was successful, and it remained in Nationalist hands (Franco's army) throughout the war. While there were no pitched battles, there was repression and death: all political parties were abolished, as were all labor unions and Galician nationalist organizations as the
Seminario de Estudos Galegos. Galicia's statute of autonomy was annulled (as were those of
Catalonia and the
Basque provinces once those were conquered). According to
Carlos Fernández Santander, at least 4,200 people were killed either extrajudicially or after summary trials, among them republicans, communists, Galician nationalists, socialists, and anarchists. Victims included the civil governors of all four Galician provinces;
Juana Capdevielle, the wife of the governor of A Coruña; mayors such as
Ánxel Casal of Santiago de Compostela, of the Partido Galeguista; prominent socialists such as
Jaime Quintanilla in
Ferrol and
Emilio Martínez Garrido in
Vigo;
Popular Front deputies
Antonio Bilbatúa,
José Miñones,
Díaz Villamil,
Ignacio Seoane, and former deputy
Heraclio Botana); soldiers who had not joined the rebellion, such as Generals
Rogelio Caridad Pita and
Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo and Admiral
Antonio Azarola; and the founders of the PG,
Alexandre Bóveda and
Víctor Casas, as well as other professionals akin to republicans and nationalists, as the journalist
Manuel Lustres Rivas or physician
Luis Poza Pastrana. Many others were forced to escape into exile, or were victims of other reprisals and removed from their jobs and positions. General
Francisco Franco – himself a Galician from Ferrol – ruled as dictator from the civil war until he died in 1975. Franco's centralizing regime suppressed any official use of the Galician language, including the use of Galician names for newborns, although its everyday oral use was not forbidden. Among the attempts at resistance were small leftist guerrilla groups such as those led by
José Castro Veiga ("O Piloto") and
Benigno Andrade ("Foucellas"), both of whom were ultimately captured and executed. In the 1960s, ministers such as
Manuel Fraga Iribarne introduced some reforms allowing
technocrats affiliated with
Opus Dei to modernize administration in a way that facilitated
capitalist economic development. However, for decades Galicia was largely confined to the role of a supplier of raw materials and energy to the rest of Spain, causing environmental havoc and leading to a wave of migration to
Venezuela and to various parts of Europe.
Fenosa, the monopolistic supplier of electricity, built hydroelectric dams, flooding many Galician river valleys. The Galician economy finally began to modernize with a French
Citroën factory in Vigo, the modernization of the canning industry and the fishing fleet, and eventually a modernization of small peasant farming practices, especially in the production of cows' milk. In the province of Ourense, businessman and politician
Eulogio Gómez Franqueira gave impetus to the raising of livestock and poultry by establishing the
Cooperativa Orensana S.A. (Coren). During the last decade of Franco's rule, there was a renewal of nationalist feeling in Galicia. The early 1970s were a time of unrest among university students, workers, and farmers. In 1972, general strikes in Vigo and Ferrol cost the lives of Amador Rey and Daniel Niebla. Later, the bishop of
Mondoñedo-
Ferrol,
Miguel Anxo Araúxo Iglesias, wrote a pastoral letter that was not well received by the Franco regime, about a demonstration in
Bazán (Ferrol) where two workers died. As part of the
transition to democracy upon the death of Franco in 1975, Galicia regained its status as an autonomous region within Spain with the Statute of Autonomy of 1981, which begins, "Galicia, historical nationality, is constituted as an Autonomous Community to access to its self-government, in agreement with the
Spanish Constitution and with the present Statute (…)". Varying degrees of
nationalist or independentist sentiment are evident at the political level. The
Bloque Nacionalista Galego or BNG, is a conglomerate of
left-wing parties and individuals that claims Galician political status as a nation. , Galician nationalist flag From 1990 to 2005, Manuel Fraga, former minister and ambassador in the Franco dictatorship, presided over the Galician autonomous government, the
Xunta de Galicia. Fraga was associated with the
Partido Popular ('People's Party', Spain's main national
conservative party) since its founding. In 2002, when the oil tanker
Prestige sank and covered the Galician coast in oil, Fraga was accused by the grassroots movement
Nunca Mais ("Never again") of having been unwilling to react. In the 2005 Galician elections, the 'People's Party' lost its absolute majority, though remaining (barely) the largest party in the parliament, with 43% of the total votes. As a result, power passed to a coalition of the
Partido dos Socialistas de Galicia (PSdeG) ('Galician
Socialists' Party'), a federal sister-party of Spain's main social-democratic party, the
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, 'Spanish Socialist Workers Party') and the nationalist
Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG). As the senior partner in the new coalition, the PSdeG nominated its leader,
Emilio Pérez Touriño, to serve as Galicia's new president, with
Anxo Quintana, the leader of BNG, as its vice president. In 2009, the PSdG-BNG coalition lost the elections, and the government went back to the People's Party (conservative), even though the PSdG-BNG coalition obtained the most votes. ==Geography==