The Galician language

Please excuse my poor English. My pages are written in Galician. Galician is the language which, along with Spanish, is spoken in Galicia (the name of the country is also spelled Galiza).

The Galician language derives from Latin (as well as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and so on). It is very similar to Portuguese. In fact many professors think that Galician is another dialect of Portuguese, just like the Portuguese spoken in Portugal and the Portuguese spoken in Brazil.

Galician had a great literary splendor in the Middle Ages, being even the poetic language of the Castilian kingdom, but the "Catholic Monarchs" (ca. 1500) forbade its use, and this lasted for hundreds of years. Then came the Galician literature renaissance (nineteenth century). Recently, the dictator Francisco Franco (1936 - 1975) forbade again Galician language and literature.

Meet my favourite Galician writer

Galicia, my country

Galicia is an Autonomous Community (this means that there is a Self-Government Body) in the Northwest of Spain, with a population (2006) of 2 767 524 inhabitants. There are 315 municipalities in Galicia, and you have below a list with the most populated. Source: Instituto Galego de Estatística.

If you want to find Galicia on a map, you must search 43° North and 8° West.