Galicians are a Romance-speaking European ethnic group from northwestern Spain; they are closely related to the northern Portuguese people and has its historic homeland in Galicia, in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. Two Romance languages are widely spoken and official in Galicia: the native Galician and Spanish.
Galician bagpipers
Castro culture carved stones
La Romería (the pilgrimage), Sorolla, 1915
Mediaeval Galician inscription in a 14th-century house, in Noia: "ESTAS CASAS MANDOU FAZER VASCO DACOSTA, ERA DE MCCCLXXVII" These houses were ordered by Vasco Dacosta, era 1377 (1339 CE)
Galician, also known as Galego, is a Western Ibero-Romance language. Around 2.4 million people have at least some degree of competence in the language, mainly in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it has official status along with Spanish. The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring Spanish regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities in the rest of Spain, in Latin America including Puerto Rico, the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.
Vindel's parchment, containing music and lyrics of several 13th-century cantigas by Martin Codax
One of the oldest legal charters written in Galician, the constitutional charter of the Bo Burgo (Good Burg) of Castro Caldelas, 1228
Mediaeval Galician inscription in a 14th-century house, in Noia: "ESTAS CASAS MANDOU FAZER VASCO DA COSTA, ERA DE MCCCLXXVII" These houses were ordered by Vasco da Costa, era 1377 (1339 AD)
Cantigas de Santa Maria, 13th century
