page_title: Galicians
section_title: Celtic revival and Celtic identity
hierarchical_section_title: Galicians / Culture / Celtic revival and Celtic identity
context_page_description: Galicians are a Celtic-Romance ethnic group, closely related to the Portuguese people, and whose historic homeland is Galicia, in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. Two Romance languages are widely spoken and official in Galicia: the native Galician and Spanish.
context_section_description: In the 19th century a group of Romantic and Nationalist writers and scholars, among them Eduardo Pondal and Manuel Murguía, led a "Celtic revival" initially based on the historical testimonies of ancient Roman and Greek authors (Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Strabo and Ptolemy), who wrote about the Celtic peoples who inhabited Galicia; but they also based this revival in linguistic and onomastic data, and in the similarity of some aspects of the culture and the geography of Galicia with that of the Celtic countries in Ireland, Brittany and Britain. The similarities include legends and traditions, decorative and popular arts and music. It also included the green hilly landscape or the ubiquity of Iron Age hill-forts, Neolithic megaliths and Bronze Age cup and ring marks.
  During the late 19th and early 20th century this revival permeated Galician society: in 1916 Os Pinos, a poem by Eduardo Pondal, was chosen as the lyrics for the new Galician hymn. One of the strophes of the poem says: Galicians, be strong / ready to great deeds / align your breast / for a glorious end / sons of the noble Celts / strong and traveler / fight for the fate / of the homeland of Breogán. The Celtic past became an integral part of the self-perceived Galician identity: as a result an important number of cultural association and sport clubs received names related to the Celts, among them Celta de Vigo, Céltiga FC, or Fillos de Breogán. From the 1970s a series of Celtic music and cultural festivals were also popularized, being the most notable the Festival Internacional do Mundo Celta de Ortigueira, at the same time that Galician folk musical bands and interpreters became usual participants in Celtic festivals elsewhere, as in the Interceltic festival of Lorient, where Galicia sent its first delegation already in 1976.
caption: La Romería (the pilgrimage), Sorolla, 1915
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