The history of the Galician language can be summarized as seven centuries of normality and five centuries of conflict. From its origins when it separated from the Galician Latin in the 9th century until the introduction of Castilian in the 16th century there was peace, and from the 16th century until the present there were various conflicts.
The first inhabitants of Galicia The first inhabitants of Galicia were of pre-indo European origins, and they left a few samples of Galician behind. Thus, pre-indo European words ("", "", "", etc.), were discovered. Likewise, the first inhabitants of Galicia received certain linguistic and cultural influences of the Celtic peoples in the Iberian Peninsula with words such as ("", "", "") that came from the Celtic language in a direct way or through Latin.
The Romans
The Romans arrived in Galicia in the second century BCE, although their conquest was not consolidated until the first century B.C.E., the process of "Romanization" began, which led to the incorporation of indigenous people to the language and the culture of the Roman conquerors. Latin became the language of the area, its assimilation was not an immediate process, but gradual, through the colonization of the Roman citizens and the cultural and administrative advantages of Roman citizenship and distribution of land, among other factors.
The process of Romanization was similar to that of other places, the Romans being able to speak strongly as a romanized elite while the majority of the inhabitants of Galicia use a degraded variant of vulgar Latin, that will result in the creation of the so-called Romance languages: Castilian, Catalan, Romanian, French, and Italian, among others.
The arrival of the Germanic Tribes From the 5th century C.E. people of Germanic culture and language came to Galicia, but due to their small demographic weight they were unable to fully assimilate into the Galician-Roman population, which ended their assimilation. Also during the High Middle Ages, refugees coming from the Britannic Islands arrived and the zone was even occupied briefly by the Arabians during the eighth century. Even though its cultural significance is insignificant compared to the background of Latin culture, these people provide various loanwords with several Germanic (, , , etc.) and Arabic terms (often through indirect sources)(, , , etc.,).
The formation of Galician The transformation of Latin into Galician occurred in a progressive and unnoticeable form. It is impossible to provide an exact date of transformation. But from the preserved written testimonies it can be said that from the eighth century the language of the church and the administration was very different than classic Latin, although it often appears full of vulgarisms and idioms that will later be transmitted to Galician.
However, the first writings in a language considered similar to Galician do not appear until well into the twelfth century and Latin continues to be the language of the culture, the administration, the liturgy and of teaching, not only in the territory of old Gallaecia but in a majority of Medieval Europe.
The oldest literary document that is currently preserved is a satiric song Ora faz ost'o senhor de Navarra by Joam Soares of Paiva, written sometime close to the year 1200. The first non-literary documents in Galician date from the beginnings of the thirteenth century; for example, the "News of Torto" (1211) and the Testament of Alfonso II of Portugal (1214). Recently the oldest document written in Galician was found, dated to the year 1228. It came from a meeting in the town of Castro Caldelas, granted by Alfonso IX in April of the year of the municipality of Allariz. The oldest document of Latin-Galician-Portuguese was found in Portugal and was a donation to the Church of Sozello, which was found in the National Archives of Torre of Tombo and is dated around the year 870 C.E.
Since the 8th century, and as the Muslim invaders consolidated their conquests in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, Galicia constituted a political unit with the medieval rulers of Asturias and León, although it maintained certain autonomy that allowed it to on occasion emerge as an independent kingdom in certain moments of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. In this context Galician is, for the most part, an exclusively oral language, with a decreasing competition with Latin in the written field. The progressive demographic weight of the Galician speakers little by little introduced Galician together with Latin in notarial documents, administrative documents, lawsuits, etc. even though Latin continues to possess a superior cultural position.
Medieval splendor
From the 14th century and from its unification, Galician literature lives its period of its greatest splendor. Galician became the language par excellence of Lyric poetry.
In this period Galician attained an international rank, since it was being used by authors of many European languages: Galician, Portuguese, Leonese, Castilian, Occitan, Sicilian, etc. and was present in royal and stately courts, although its use was concentrated mostly in the Iberian Peninsula.
The "Songs of Santa María," poetic compositions performed in praise of the Virgin Mary, are the main display of the religious aspect of the Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry and constitute the body of the most important medieval Marian poetry in all of the Iberian Peninsula and across Europe. They were composed in the court of King Alfonso X "the wise man" of Castile, who was in charge of the management of the poetry and on occasion participated directly in its composition. These are examples of the prestige gained by Galician as a literary language by the end of the thirteenth century. The splendor spans not only the kingdom of Castile, but also the neighboring kingdom, where the king himself, Dionsio I of Portugal, was a prominent composer of Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry.
In comparison with lyric poetry, the medieval literary prose in Galician is scarce and belated. It is necessary to keep in mind that the central cultures of the period, the monasteries and the monastic schools, were where the use of ecclesiastical Latin prevailed. Nevertheless, from the end of the thirteenth century and more significantly in the fourteenth through fifteenth centuries, the most widely disseminated literary themes in Europe were collected in the Galician language. Various examples are the stories of the so-called "Breton Cycle" around the legendary figure of King Arthur, the texts regarding the history and destruction of Troy, such as the "Trojan History" and the "Trojan Chronicle" and the "Miracles of Santiago", sets of stories about the destruction of Jerusalem to the miracle intervention of Saint James the Apostle in different situations. Also it is necessary to include other texts in prose that are translations or versions of other languages with their own elaboration, such as the "Galician Chronicle Xeral", "General Estoria", "Galician Chronicle of 1404" and "The Chronicle of Santa Maria of Iria".
The dark centuries The end of the Middle Ages (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) coincides with the end of the splendor of the Galician language and the beginning of the progressive period of decline, both in the common and literary use of the language.
Several factors influenced this progressive decline, especially the progressive centralization of the kingdom of Castile and the subsequent consolidation of absolutism. Also important is the settlement in Galicia of a foreign nobility outside of the Galician culture and language, that replaced the native nobility that was defeated on several occasions in the succession and dynastic struggles of the crown of Castile. First in the war between Pedro I "The Cruel" and Enrique II of Trastámara and later (1475–1479) in the war between Juana the Beltraneja and Isabel the Catholic; the absence of a strong bourgeoisie capable of defending its interests, the decline of the population, the reform of the church, and the loss of autonomy of the Galician Church, etc.
These facts, together with the growing centralist and interventionist policy of Castile, progressively strengthen the current "de-galicianizing" movement, especially in the upper classes of society, which prevents the consolidation of Galician as a cultured and literary language. This process is aggravated by the formation of modern states and the appearance of the concept of the "nation-state", which entails a linguistic uniformity and administration as a factor of cohesion of political structures.
During a long period of three centuries (the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth) denominated the "dark centuries," the Galician language, compared to Castilian and Portuguese, was practically absent from written works in the Iberian Peninsula and during this period began a process of codification and grammatical and spelling fixation that gives a category of cultural languages. In addition, their use extends over the entire population of the states of Spain and Portugal, respectively. In contrast, the exclusively oral use of the language has led to a progressive dialectalization and fragmentation of the language, disabling its literary and scientific use.
In this way the Galician language was left out of the literary trends of the Renaissance and Baroque, which coincide with the so-called "Golden Age" of Castilian literature. There are, however, scarce written testimonies (such as letters addressed to Diego Sarmiento of Acuña, count of Gondomar), documents and a few literary samples that allow us to appreciate the situation of the language at the time. Parallel to the space in scholarly literature, a popular poem survives in lullabies, blind songs, carnival songs, riddles, legends, romances, tales, farces, etc. Many of these literary expressions survived until today through oral transmission. In the eighteenth century, some voices of denunciation of the so-called "enlightened" arose that showed their concern for the underdevelopment of Galicia and offered renewing proposals for economic, social and cultural life. Among this minority group of intellectuals, the figure of Father Martín Sarmiento forcefully stands out, a versatile character-naturalist, linguist, and book lover who defended the use of Galician in teaching, administration and the church, that is, its normalization as the language of the Galicians. Also participating were Father Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, the first scholar to reject the status of the "dialect" of Galician and Father Sobreira, who continued the lexicographical work of Sarmiento. His work constituted the first call of attention to the linguistic problem that will manifest itself in its entirety starting in the second half of nineteenth century.
The Resurgence "Rexurdimento" (Resurgence) is the name by which the nineteenth century is known in the history of Galician language and expresses a clear path of recovery, not only literary, but also cultural, political and historical.
Since the French invasion and the War of Independence in 1809, and later among the clashes between absolutists and liberals in the whole of Spain, texts written in Galician arose, in loose sheets or journals used for propaganda. Some called the peasants to defend the country, others defended liberal ideas.
Throughout the century, after the end of absolutism and the start of a constitutional monarchy, various Galician movements were born, based in the defense of the uniqueness of the different personalities of Galicia. The first of them, emerged around the decade of the 1840s is called "Provincialism", which denounced the social marginalization of Galicia and looked for a social revaluation of its art, customs and history.