Galicia (Spain)
Galicia is an autonomous community of Spain and historic nationality under Spanish law. Located in the northwest Iberian Peninsula, it includes the provinces of A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense, and Pontevedra.
Galicia is located in Atlantic Europe. It is bordered by Portugal to the south, the Spanish autonomous communities of Castile and León and Asturias to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Cantabrian Sea to the north. It had a population of 2,705,833 in 2024 and a total area of. Galicia has over of coastline, including its offshore islands and islets, among them Cíes Islands, Ons, Sálvora, Cortegada Island, which together form the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park, and the largest and most populated, A Illa de Arousa.
The area now called Galicia was first inhabited by humans during the Middle Paleolithic period, and takes its name from the Gallaeci, the Celtic people living north of the Douro River during the last millennium BC. Galicia was incorporated into the Roman Empire at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, and was made a Roman province in the 3rd century AD. In 410, the Germanic Suebi established a kingdom with its capital in Braga; this kingdom was incorporated into that of the Visigoths in 585. In 711, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate invaded the Iberian Peninsula conquering the Visigoth kingdom of Hispania by 718, but soon Galicia was incorporated into the Christian kingdom of Asturias by 740. During the Middle Ages, the kingdom of Galicia was occasionally ruled by its own kings, but most of the time it was leagued to the kingdom of Leon and later to that of Castile, while maintaining its own legal and customary practices and culture. From the 13th century on, the kings of Castile, as kings of Galicia, appointed an Adiantado-mór, whose attributions passed to the Governor and Captain General of the Kingdom of Galiza from the last years of the 15th century. The Governor also presided the Real Audiencia do Reino de Galicia, a royal tribunal and government body. From the 16th century, the representation and voice of the kingdom was held by an assembly of deputies and representatives of the cities of the kingdom, the Cortes or Junta of the Kingdom of Galicia. This institution was forcibly discontinued in 1833 when the kingdom was divided into four administrative provinces with no legal mutual links. During the 19th and 20th centuries, demand grew for self-government and for the recognition of the culture of Galicia. This resulted in the Statute of Autonomy of 1936, soon frustrated by Franco's coup d'état and subsequent long dictatorship. After democracy was restored the legislature passed the Statute of Autonomy of 1981, approved in referendum and currently in force, providing Galicia with self-government.
The interior of Galicia is characterized by a hilly landscape; mountain ranges rise to in the east and south. The coastal areas are mostly an alternate series of rias and beaches. The climate of Galicia is usually temperate and rainy, with markedly drier summers; it is usually classified as warm-summer mediterranean. Its topographic and climatic conditions have made animal husbandry and farming the primary source of Galicia's wealth for most of its history, allowing for a relatively high density of population. Except shipbuilding and food processing, Galicia was based on a farming and fishing economy until after the mid-20th century, when it began to industrialize. In 2018, the nominal gross domestic product was €62.900 billion, with a nominal GDP per capita of €23,300. Galicia is characterised, unlike other Spanish regions, by the absence of a metropolis dominating the territory. Indeed, the urban network is made up of 7 main cities: the four provincial capitals A Coruña, Pontevedra, Ourense and Lugo, the political capital Santiago de Compostela and the industrial cities Vigo and Ferrol. The population is largely concentrated in two main areas: from Ferrol to A Coruña on the northern coast, and in the Rías Baixas region in the southwest, including the cities of Vigo, Pontevedra, and the interior city of Santiago de Compostela. There are smaller populations around the interior cities of Lugo and Ourense. The political capital is Santiago de Compostela, in the province of A Coruña. Vigo, in the province of Pontevedra, is the largest municipality and A Coruña the most populated city in Galicia. Two languages are official and widely used today in Galicia: the native Galician; and Spanish, usually called Castilian. While most Galicians are bilingual, a 2013 survey reported that 51% of the Galician population spoke Galician most often on a day-to-day basis, while 48% most often used Spanish.
Toponymy
The name Galicia derives from the Latin toponym Callaecia, later Gallaecia, related to the name of an ancient Celtic tribe that resided north of the Douro river, the Gallaeci or Callaeci in Latin, or Καλλαϊκoί in Greek. These Callaeci were the first tribe in the area to help the Lusitanians against the invading Romans. The Romans applied their name to all the other tribes in the northwest who spoke the same language and lived the same life.The toponymy of the name has been studied since the 7th century by authors such as Isidore of Seville, who wrote that "Galicians are called so, because of their fair skin, as the Gauls", relating the name to the Greek word for milk. In the 21st century, some scholars have derived the name of the ancient Callaeci either from Proto-Indo-European *kl-no- 'hill', through a local relational suffix -aik-, also attested in Celtiberian, so meaning 'the hill '; or from Proto-Celtic *kallī- 'forest', so meaning 'the forest '. In any case, Galicia, being per se a derivation of the ethnic name Kallaikói, means 'the land of the Galicians'.
Another recent proposal comes from linguist Francesco Benozzo after identifying the root gall- / kall- in a number of Celtic words with the meaning "stone" or "rock", as follows: gall, gal, gailleichan, kailhoù, galagh and gall. Hence, Benozzo explains the ethnonym Callaeci as being "the stone people" or "the people of the stone", about the builders of the ancient megaliths and stone formations so common in Galicia.
The name evolved during the Middle Ages from Gallaecia, sometimes written Galletia, to Gallicia. In the 13th century, with the written emergence of the Galician language, Galiza became the most usual written form of the name of the country, being replaced during the 15th and 16th centuries by the current form, Galicia, which is also the spelling of the name in Spanish. The historical denomination Galiza became popular again during the end of the 19th and the first three-quarters of the 20th century and is still used with some frequency today. The Xunta de Galicia, the local devolved government, uses Galicia. The Royal Galician Academy, the institution responsible for regulating the Galician language, whilst recognizing Galiza as a legitimate current denomination, has stated that the only official name of the country is Galicia.
Due to Galicia's history and culture with mythology, the land has been called "Terra Meiga".
History
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, 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.File:Pallozas nevadas, O Cebreiro.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|left|Palloza 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 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.
The Castro culture 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.
File:Galician warrior head.JPG|thumb|upright=0.9|left|A local Iron Age 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. 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 as Aquis Querquennis, Ciadella camp or Lucus Augusti, roads 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.