Galicia may justly be called the cradle of the Spanish nobility, for almost all Spain’s proudest families have their roots in Gallegan soil, their titles having been given to their ancestors as a reward for the heroic resistance they offered to the Moors.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Galicia seems to have been left out of count, and to have gradually sunk into oblivion. Even the Spaniards themselves know very little about her to-day. Yet in the Middle Ages her fame as a goal of pilgrims rivalled that of Palestine, not only throughout Spain, but throughout the length and breadth of Christendom; while earlier still, when she bravely resisted Julius Cæsar’s attempt at conquest, she won for herself no little glory.
The small amount of information relative to Galicia which is to be obtained from English and French books is distinctly unfavourable. We are told that her climate is damp and rainy, and that her inhabitants are dull, stubborn, and stupid; while her wonderful history, her exquisite scenery, and her fascinating architecture are barely alluded to, if not passed over in absolute silence. It is to Spanish writers that we must turn for information that is neither superficial nor unreliable.
There exists in the Spanish language a rich literature relating to Galicia, but a good history of this province has yet to be written. Aguiar began to write one in the thirties of the nineteenth century, but death frustrated the completion of his design, as it did those of several other competent men who had planned a similar task.[1] Aguiar explained in his first volume that he had been led to undertake the work by finding how unjustly and incorrectly Galicia had been treated by earlier writers, and how little she was known to the rest of Spain, in spite of her being one of the most important, one of the most beautiful, and one of the most cultured of the Spanish provinces. He further complained that no historians had ever taken the trouble to visit Galicia, except Ambrosio Morales,[2] whose sole object in doing so was to search for antiquities for the Escurial collection.
Galicia was the province that suffered most from the political unification of Spain; she was the one most sacrificed to the centralisation of political administration, partially, no doubt, in consequence of her position being the most distant and the most isolated one. There are many devoted Gallegans who compare their beloved territory to Finland, to Ireland and Hungary, and are never tired of saying that self-government alone could restore to her the prosperity that has forsaken her shores. They feel that as long as she is governed at a distance and by strangers she can never hope to raise her head.