page_title: Galicia (Spain)
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Galicia (Spain) / Demographics / Language
caption_attribution_description: Galego: Composisión do Foro do Bo Burgo de Castro Caldelas, documento en galego do século XIII (abril de 1228), atopado na Casa de Alba editado polo Consello da Cultura Galega. Documento de Privilexio Real Rodado.
context_page_description: 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 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 2,701,743 in 2018 and a total area of 29,574 km². Galicia has over 1,660 km of coastline, including its offshore islands and islets, among them Cíes Islands, Ons, Sálvora, Cortegada, 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.
context_section_description: Galicia has two official languages: Galician (Galician: galego) and Spanish (also known in Spain as castellano, "Castilian"), both of them Romance languages. Galician originated regionally; the latter was associated with Castile. Galician is recognized in the Statute of Autonomy of Galicia as the lingua propia ("own language") of Galicia.
  Galician is closely related to Portuguese. Both share a common medieval phase known as Galician-Portuguese. The independence of Portugal since the late Middle Ages has favored the divergence of the Galician and Portuguese languages as they developed. Though considered to be independent languages in Galicia, the shared history between Galician and Portuguese has been widely acknowledged; in 2014, the Galician parliament approved Law 1/2014 on the promotion of Portuguese and links with the Lusophony.
  The official Galician language has been standardized by the Real Academia Galega on the basis of literary tradition. Although there are local dialects, Galician media conform to this standard form, which is also used in primary, secondary, and university education. There are more than three million Galician speakers in the world. Galician ranks in the lower orders of the 150 most widely spoken languages on earth.
  For more than four centuries of Castilian domination, Spanish was the only official language in Galicia.  Galician faded from day-to-day use in urban areas. Since the re-establishment of democracy in Spain—in particular since passage and implementation of the Lei de Normalización Lingüística ("Law of Linguistic Normalization", Ley 3/1983, 15 June 1983)—the first generation of students in mass education has attended schools conducted in Galician. (Castilian Spanish is also taught.)
  Since the late 20th century and the establishment of Galicia's autonomy, the Galician language is resurgent. In the cities, it is generally used as a second language for most. According to a 2001 census, 99.16 percent of the population of Galicia understood the language, 91.04 percent spoke it, 68.65 percent could read it and 57.64 percent could write it. The first two numbers (understanding and speaking) were roughly the same as responses a decade earlier. But there were great gains among the percentage of the population who could read and write Galician: a decade earlier, only 49.3 percent of the population could read Galician, and 34.85 percent could write it. During the Franco era, the teaching of Galician was prohibited. Today older people may speak the language but have no written competence because of those years. Among the regional languages of Spain, Galician has the highest percentage of speakers in its population.
  The earliest known document in Galician-Portuguese dates from 1228. The Foro do bo burgo do Castro Caldelas was granted by Alfonso IX of León to the town of Burgo, in Castro Caldelas, after the model of the constitutions of the town of Allariz. A distinct Galician literature emerged during the Middle Ages: In the 13th century important contributions were made to the Romance canon in Galician-Portuguese, the most notable those by the troubadour Martín Codax, the priest Airas Nunes, King Denis of Portugal, and King Alfonso X of Castile, Alfonso O Sabio ("Alfonso the Wise"), the same monarch who began the process of establishing the hegemony of Castilian. During this period, Galician-Portuguese was considered the language of love poetry in the Iberian Romance linguistic culture. The names and memories of Codax and other popular cultural figures are well preserved in modern Galicia.
caption: One of the oldest legal documents written in Galician, the Foro do bo burgo do Castro Caldelas
exif: {}