Atlantic Galicia still answers to a Celtic-era people name
Spain's northwestern autonomous community of Galicia—provinces A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense, Pontevedra—faces Portugal and the Atlantic with about 2.7 million people on 29,574 square kilometres. It takes its name from the Gallaeci, Celtic peoples north of the Douro in the last millennium BCE.
Galicia borders Portugal to the south and Asturias and Castile and León to the east, and faces the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Sea along more than 1,660 kilometres of coast counting islands such as the Cíes and Ons. Hills fill the interior and ranges reach 2,000 metres in the east and south, while the shore alternates rias and beaches. Rain is plentiful but summers are markedly drier, so the climate is usually classed as warm-summer Mediterranean, and farming and livestock have long been the main sources of wealth.
Latin Callaecia, later Gallaecia, came from the Callaeci, a tribe north of the Douro that first aided the Lusitanians against Rome; the Romans then stretched the label to neighbours sharing their speech. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century tied the name to fair skin and the Greek word for milk, while modern scholars suggest a root meaning hill or, in Francesco Benozzo's reading, stone, making them the people of the stone. Medieval scribes wrote Gallicia, Galician texts from the 13th century used Galiza, and the present spelling took over in the 15th and 16th centuries. Folklore earned it the nickname Terra Meiga, land of witches.
Neanderthal stone tools in Eirós Cave at Triacastela are the oldest trace of people. Neolithic builders left thousands of megalithic burial mounds, and rock carvings of cup-and-ring marks, labyrinths, deer and hunting scenes survive at places such as Campo Lameiro in the Rías Baixas. During the Iron Age the Castro culture raised ringed hillforts with concentric walls and ditches, on hilltops or sea cliffs, at sites like Baroña and San Cibrao de Lás.
Roman legions under Decimus Junius Brutus first marched in during 137–136 BC, but conquest came only under Augustus and was sealed with the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC; gold drew Rome, and many hillforts were emptied, some by force. The territory became a province in the 3rd century, and in 410 the Germanic Suebi founded a kingdom centred on Braga.
Source: Galicia (Spain)
