The Iberian Peninsula, where Galicia is located, has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, first by Neanderthals and then by modern humans. From about 4500 BC, it (like much of the north and west of the peninsula) was inhabited by a megalithic culture, which entered the Bronze Age about 1500 BC. These people would become the Gallaeci (a group of Celtic tribes), and they would be conquered by the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD. As the Roman Empire declined, Galicia would be conquered and ruled by various Germanic tribes, notably the Suebi and Visigoths, until the 9th century. Then the Muslim conquest of Iberia reached Galicia, although they never quite controlled the area.
In the 9th century, remains were found that were believed to be Saint James, the apostle who had brought Christianity to Spain in the first century, and the church Santiago de Compostela was built to honor these relics. This church would become one of the most important Christian pilgrimage destinations in the world.
Intermittent war, especially between Christians and Muslims, was a regular part of the Middle Ages in Galicia, as the Reconquista (Christians gradually defeating Muslim kingdoms in Spain) would last until the 15th century. During this time, Galicia was sometimes an independent kingdom, and sometimes part of or united with kingdoms such as Asturias, León, or Portugal. The kingdom of Spain was formed at the end of the 15th century by the union of Castile (of which Galicia was then a part) and Aragon.
Political and cultural sentiments during the 19th century increased support for the idea of Galicia having a separate identity from the rest of Spain. The Second Spanish Republic allowed Galicia to have an official status of autonomy during the 1930s. After the Spanish Civil War, however, the regime of Francisco Franco removed this autonomy, and generally suppressed local cultural identities throughout Spain in favor of a single Spanish national identity. When Spain transitioned to democracy following Franco's death in 1975, Galicia was allowed autonomy again, and there have been efforts since then to preserve Galician heritage and culture.
Prehistory
Megalithic culture
Galicia, northern Portugal, Asturias, western León, and Zamora formed a single megalithic area since the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Ages (also called the Copper Age), around 4500–1500 BC.
This was the first great culture to appear in Galicia, with a great capacity for construction and architecture. This was combined with a deep sense of religion, based on the cult of the dead, the mediators between man and the gods.
From this era there remain thousands of dolmens (mámoas), a type of tomb or sepulchre, throughout the entire territory. From its social organization it has been confirmed that it corresponded to some type of clan structure.
Bronze Age The introduction of bronze-working techniques introduced a new cultural era, in which the new importance of metals resulted in intense mining activity.
Peoples from the Castilian plateau moved to Galicia, thus increasing the population, because its position near the Atlantic Ocean gave it a very humid climate.
The increase in population caused certain conflicts, but also led to increased mining and production of weapons, useful objects, and ornamental objects of gold and bronze. Pieces of jewellery crafted from Galician metals circulated throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe.
Antiquity
The Gallaeci (Celts)
At the end of the Iron Age, people from northwestern Iberian Peninsula formed a homogeneous and distinct cultural group, which was later identified by early Greek and Latin authors, who called them "Gallaeci" (Galicians), perhaps due to their apparent similarity with the Galli (Gauls) and Gallati (Galatians). The name of Galicia derives from the name of this tribal complex.
The Gallaeci were originally a Celtic people who for centuries had occupied the territory of modern Galicia and northern Portugal; bounded to the south by the Lusitanians and to the east by the Astures. The Gallaecians lived in fortified villages now called castros (Latin: castra): (hillforts), ranging from small villages of less than a hectare (more common in the north), to great hillforts with more than 10 hectares, named "Oppida" or "Citânia", which were more common in the southern half of the traditional settlement area.
This mode of inhabiting the territory – in hillforts – was common throughout Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages, having received in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula the name of "culture of hillforts" or "Castro Culture", what refers to this type of cultural manifestation before the arrival of the Roman Empire. However, even after the Romans' fall, the Gallaeci-Romans continued living in hillforts until the 8th century A.D. In the territory of actual Galicia alone, there exist more than two thousand hillforts, which shows the greatest dispersion of population from the Iron Age in Europe. This would be the origin of the Galician occupation of the territory inherited until nowadays, characterized by small and high numerous populations so distant from each other.
The Gallaeci's political organization was based on small independent states formed by a large number of hillforts; these states were headed by a local king whom the Romans called princeps, as in other parts of Europe. Each Gallaecian identified himself as a member of the hillfort where he lived, as well as the state / people to whom it belonged, and which the Romans called Populus. Among the Galleci there were many named tribes: the Artabri, the Bracari, the Coelerni, the Grovii, the Nemetati, etc. In the same way, at the end of the 18th century, Galicians identified themselves with their parish and their county.
In religious terms, the Gallaeci showed a Celtic religion based on the cult to pan-Celtic gods as Bormanus, Coventina and Lugus; also Bandua, Cossus, Endovelicus, Reue, etc.
Roman Gallaecia (19 BC – 410 AD)
The knowledge that we have today about the society of the hillforts is very limited; according to the Roman historians, the Galicians were a collection of barbarians who spent the day fighting and the night eating, drinking and dancing to the moon. But today it appears that in the last five centuries BC they developed an aristocratic and even perhaps a feudal social model. The division of the country into concelhos, a concept similar to the counties of the islands or Romania, seems to be based on this class of social organization. Also, the structure based on hillforts seems to be associated with a fortified occupation of the territory, resembling the Central European classic Celtic habitat. On the other hand, this kind of territorial occupation was likely associated with its mineral resources (like a gold rush). It is also clear that the Romans' interest in this region was mainly related to its gold mines.
When Iberia was involved in the Punic Wars between the Carthaginians and the Romans, the strategic alliance that they maintained with the Phoenicians enabled Hannibal to recruit many Gallegans. When the Romans finally undertook the conquest of Iberia, the Gallaicoi faced them in 137 BC. in the battle at the river Douro that resulted in a great Roman victory against 60,000 Galicians; the Roman general, proconsul Decimus Iunius Brutus, returned to Rome as a hero, receiving the additional name of Gallaicus, according to the historian Paulus Orosius.
At the end of Brutus' campaigns, Rome controlled the territory between the Douro and Minho rivers plus probable extensions along the coast and in the interior. The Second Invasion, of 61 BC, landed at Brigantium (A Coruña), under the command of Julius Caesar.
The evidence suggests that the resistance of the Gaedels against the Romans ended here; from now on, they would be enlisted massively as auxiliaries of the Roman legions, fulfilling destinies sometimes completely separate from Galicia, as far as Thrace and Dacia. It has been estimated that of the total of Roman auxiliary troops coming from Iberia, more than a third belonged to tribes of the peninsular northwest.
The final extinction of Celtic resistance was the aim of the violent and ruthless Cantabrian Wars fought under the emperor Octavian from 26 to 19 BC. The resistance was appalling: collective suicide rather than surrender, mothers who killed their children before committing suicide, crucified prisoners of war who sang triumphant hymns, rebellions of captives who killed their guards and returned home from Gaul.
In the 3rd century, Diocletian created an administrative division which included the conventūs (plural of conventus) of Gallaecia, Asturica and perhaps Cluniense. This province took the name of Gallaecia since Gallaecia was the most populous and important zone within the province. In 409, as Roman control collapsed, the conquests by the Suebi transformed Roman Gallaecia (conventūs Lucense and Bracarense) into the kingdom of Gallaecia (the Galliciense Regnum recorded by Hydatius and Gregory of Tours).
Medieval Galicia
Suebic Kingdom of Galicia (410–585)
In the year 411, Galicia fell to the Suebi, who formed a kingdom of their own.
The number of the original Suebic invaders is estimated as fewer than 30,000 people, settled mainly in the urbanized zones of Braga (Bracara Augusta), Porto, Lugo (Lucus Augusta) and Astorga (Asturica Augusta). Bracara Augusta, the modern city of Braga, became the capital of the Suebi, as it was previously the capital of the Gallaecia Roman province. Suebic Gallaecia was larger than the modern region: it extended south to the river Douro and to Ávila in the east.
The Suebic kingdom in Gallaecia lasted from 410 to 584 and seems to have enjoyed relatively stable government for most of that time. Historians like José António Lopes Silva, the translator of Idatius' chronicles, the primary written source for the 5th century, finds that the essential temper of Galician culture was established in the blending of Ibero-Roman culture with that of the Suebi.
There were occasional clashes with the Visigoths, who arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 416 and came to dominate most of the peninsula, but the Suebi maintained their independence until 584, when the Visigothic King Leovigild, invaded the Suebic kingdom and finally defeated it, bringing it under Visigoth control.
Richard Fletcher (Fletcher 1984) points out that in Late Antiquity Galicia was still very much a part of the Roman and Mediterranean world. He instances the Galician nun Egeria's account of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 381–4 and the journey of the young Idatius, though living "at the uttermost limit of the world", who had met Jerome in the East; his chronicle shows that he remained aware of the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean and refers to travellers from the east coming to Galicia. As bishop Idatius travelled to Gaul on an embassy to Aetius, 431–2. Miro, king of the Suevi, had diplomatic relations with fellow barbarian kings in Neustria and Burgundy, but also with the emperors in Constantinople. Martin of Braga, a distinguished 6th century bishop, was a native of Pannonia. The Visigothic king Leovigild impounded the ships of Gaulish merchants in Galicia. At Lorenzana, the fine sarcophagus that received at a later date the mortal remains of count Osorio Gutiérrez, was probably an import from southern Gaul in the 7th century, Fletcher notes. And one of the coins in the Bordeaux hoard deposited about 700 was struck at a Galician mint, suggesting possible trade connections.
Arrival of the Britons and the founding of the diocese of Britonia