The Kingdom of Galicia was a political entity located in southwestern Europe, which at its territorial zenith occupied the entire northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded by the Suebic king Hermeric in 409, with its capital established in Braga. It was the first kingdom that officially adopted Catholicism. In 449, it minted its own currency. In 585, it became a part of the Visigothic Kingdom. In the 8th century, Galicia became a part of the newly founded Christian Kingdom of Asturias, which later became the Kingdom of León, while occasionally achieving independence under the authority of its own kings. Compostela became the capital of Galicia in the 11th century, while the independence of Portugal (1128) determined its southern boundary. The accession of Castilian King Ferdinand III to the Leonese kingdom in 1230 brought Galicia under the control of the Crown of Castile.

The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1715.