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. In the early 10th century, the Kingdom of Galicia was formed following the division of the Kingdom of Asturias after the death of Alfonso III in 910. His sons split the kingdom, with Ordoño II inheriting Galicia. While Galicia became a distinct political entity, it remained closely tied to the Leonese and Asturian realms through dynastic connections. Later, Ordoño II integrated Galicia into the Kingdom of León when he inherited the latter. Though the Kingdom of Galicia had moments of semi-independence, it was typically seen as part of the Kingdom of León. Santiago de 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.
Galicia resisted central control and supported a series of alternative claimants, including John of León, Galicia and Seville (1296), Ferdinand I of Portugal (1369) and John of Gaunt (1386) and was not brought firmly into submission until the Catholic Monarchs imposed the Santa Hermandad in Galicia. The Kingdom of Galicia was then administered within the Crown of Castile (1490–1715) and later the Crown of Spain (1715–1833) by an Audiencia Real directed by a Governor which also held the office of Captain General and President. The representative assembly of the Kingdom was then the Junta or Cortes of the Kingdom of Galicia, which briefly declared itself sovereign when Galicia remained free of Napoleonic occupation (except during January–July 1809). The kingdom and its Junta were dissolved by Maria Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Regent of Spain, in 1834.
Origin and foundation (409)
The origin of the kingdom lies in the 5th century, when the Suebi settled permanently in the former Roman province of Gallaecia. Their king, Hermeric, probably signed a foedus, or pact, with the Roman Emperor Honorius, which conceded them lands in Galicia. The Suebi set their capital in the former Bracara Augusta and set the foundations of a kingdom, which was first acknowledged as Regnum Suevorum (Kingdom of the Suebi) but later as Regnum Galliciense (Kingdom of Galicia).
A century later, the differences between Gallaeci and Suebi people had faded, which led to the systematic use of terms like Galliciense Regnum (Galician Kingdom), Regem Galliciae (King of Galicia), Rege Suevorum (King of Suebi), and Galleciae totius provinciae rex (king of all Galician provinces), while bishops, such as Martin of Braga, were recognized as episcopi Gallaecia (Bishop of Galicia).
Suebic Kingdom (409–585)
The independent Suebic kingdom of Galicia lasted from 409 to 585, having remained relatively stable for most of that time.
5th century
In 409 Gallaecia was divided, ad habitandum, between two Germanic people, the Hasdingi Vandals, who settled the eastern lands, and the Suebi, who established themselves in the coastal areas. As with most Germanic invasions, the number of the original Suebi is estimated to be relatively low, generally fewer than 100,000, and most often around 30,000 people. They settled mainly in the regions around modern northern Portugal and Western Galicia, in the towns of Braga (Bracara Augusta) and Porto, and later in Lugo (Lucus Augusta) and Astorga (Asturica Augusta). The valley of the Limia (or Lima) River is thought to have received the largest concentration of Germanic settlers, and Bracara Augusta—the modern city of Braga—became the capital of the Suebi, as it had previously been the capital of Gallaecia.
In 419 a war broke out between the Vandal king Gunderic and the Suebi's Hermeric. After a blockade alongside the Nervasian Mountains, the Suebi obtained Roman help, forcing the Vandals to flee into the Baetica. In the absence of competitors, the Suebi began a period of expansion, first inside Gallaecia, and later into other Roman provinces. In 438 Hermeric ratified a peace treaty with the Gallaeci, the native and partially Romanized people.
Illness led Hermeric to abdicate in favor of his son, Rechila, who moved his troops to the south and the east, conquering Mérida and Seville, the capitals of the Roman provinces of Lusitania and Betica. In 448 Rechila died, leaving the expanding state to his son Rechiar, who in 449 became the first Germanic kings of post-Roman Europe to convert to Nicene Christianity. Rechiar married a Visigothic princess, and was also the first Germanic king to mint coins in ancient Roman territories. Rechiar led further expansions to the east, marauding through the Provincia Tarraconensis, which was still held by Rome. The Roman emperor Avitus sent a large army of foederates, under the direction of the Visigoth Theoderic II, who defeated the Suebi army by the river Órbigo, near modern-day Astorga. Rechiar fled, but he was pursued and captured, then executed in 457.
In the aftermath of Rechiar's death, multiple candidates for the throne appeared, finally grouping into two allegiances. The division between the two groups was marked by the Minius River (now Minho River), probably as a consequence of the localities of the Quadi and Marcomanni tribes, who constituted the Suebi nation on the Iberian Peninsula. The Suebi in the north conquered Lugo, proceeding to use that city as their co-capital, while the Suebi in the south expanded into Lisbon and Conimbriga, which were assaulted, and abandoned after their Roman inhabitants were banished. By 465 Remismund, who established a policy of friendship with the Goths and promoted the conversion of his own people into Arianism, was recognized by his people as the only king of the Suebi.
6th century
After a period of obscurity, with little remaining information on the history of this area, or in fact Western Europe in general, the Suebi Kingdom reappears in European politics and history during the second half of the 6th century. This is following the arrival of Saint Martin of Braga, a Pannonian monk dedicated to converting the Suebi to Nicene Christianity and consequently into allegiance with the other Nicene Christian regional powers, the Franks and the Eastern Roman Empire.
Under King Ariamir, who called for the First Council of Braga, the conversion of the Suebi to Nicene Christianity was apparent; while this same council condemned Priscillianism, it made no similar statement on Arianism. Later, King Theodemar ordered an administrative and ecclesiastical division of his kingdom, with the creation of new bishoprics and the promotion of Lugo, which possessed a large Suebi community, to the level of Metropolitan Bishop along with Braga.
Theodemar's son and successor, King Miro, called for the Second Council of Braga, which was attended by all the bishops of the kingdom, from the Briton bishopric of Britonia in the Bay of Biscay, to Astorga in the east, and Coimbra and Idanha in the south. Five of the attendant bishops used Germanic names, showing the integration of the different communities of the country. King Miro also promoted contention with the Arian Visigoths, who under the leadership of King Leovigild were rebuilding their fragmented kingdom which had been ruled mostly by Ostrogoths since the beginning of the 6th century, following the defeat and expulsion of Aquitania by the Franks. After clashing in frontier lands, Miro and Leovigild agreed upon a temporary peace.
The Suebi maintained their independence until 585, when Leovigild, on the pretext of conflict over the succession, invaded the Suebic kingdom and finally defeated it. Audeca, the last king of the Suebi, who had deposed his brother-in-law Eboric, held out for a year before being captured in 585. This same year a nobleman named Malaric rebelled against the Goths, but he was defeated.
As with the Visigothic language, there are only traces of the Suebi tongue remaining, as they quickly adopted the local vulgar Latin. Some words of plausible Suebi origin are the modern Galician and Portuguese words laverca (lark), meixengra or mejengra (titmouse), lobio (vine), escá (a measure, formerly "cup"), groba (ravine), and others. Much more significant was their contribution to names of the local toponymy and onomastics.
The historiography of the Suebi, and of Galicia in general, was long marginalized in Spanish culture, with the first connected history of the Suebi in Galicia being written by a German scholar.
Visigothic monarchy (585–711)
In 585, Liuvigild, the Visigothic king of Hispania and Septimania, annexed the Kingdom of Galicia, after defeating King Audeca, and later the pretender to the throne, Malaric. Thus the kingdom of the Suebi, which incorporated large territories of the ancient Roman provinces of Gallaecia and Lusitania, became the sixth province of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo.
The government of the Visigoths in Galicia did not totally disrupt the society, and the Suevi Catholic dioceses of Bracara, Dumio, Portus Cale or Magneto, Tude, Iria, Britonia, Lucus, Auria, Asturica, Conimbria, Lameco, Viseu, and Egitania continued to operate normally. During the reign of Liuvigild, new Arian bishops were raised among the Suebi in cities such as Lugo, Porto, Tui, and Viseu, alongside the cities' Catholic bishops. These Arian bishops returned to Catholicism in 589, when King Reccared himself converted to Catholicism, along with the Goths and Suebi, at the Third Council of Toledo.
The territorial and administrative organization inherited from the Suevi was incorporated into the new Provincial status, although Lugo was reduced again to the category of bishopric, and subjected to Braga. Meanwhile, the Suevi, Roman, and Galician cultural, religious, and aristocratic elite accepted new monarchs. The peasants maintained a collective formed mostly by freemen and serfs of Celtic, Roman and Suebi extraction, as no major Visigoth immigration occurred during the 6th and 7th centuries.
This continuity led to the persistence of Galicia as a differentiated province within the realm, as indicated by the acts of several Councils of Toledo, chronicles such as that of John of Biclar, and in military laws such as the one extolled by Wamba which was incorporated into the Liber Iudicum, the Visigothic legal code. It was not until the administrative reformation produced during the reign of Recceswinth that the Lusitanian dioceses annexed by the Suevi to Galicia (Coimbra, Idanha, Lamego, Viseu, and parts of Salamanca) were restored to Lusitania. This same reform reduced the number of mints in Galicia from a few dozen to just three, those in the cities of Lugo, Braga, and Tui.
The most notable person of 7th century Galicia was Saint Fructuosus of Braga. Fructuosus was the son of a provincial Visigoth dux (military provincial governor), and was known for the foundations he established throughout the west of the Iberian Peninsula, generally in places with difficult access, such as mountain valleys or islands. He also wrote two monastic rulebooks, characterized by their pact-like nature, with the monastic communities ruled by an abbot, under the remote authority of a bishop (episcopus sub regula), and each integrant of the congregation having signed a written pact with him. Fructuosus was later consecrated as abbot-bishop of Dumio, the most important monastery of Gallaecia—founded by Martin of Braga in the 6th century—under Suebi rule. In 656 he was appointed bishop of Braga and metropolitan of Galicia, ostensibly against his own will.
During his later years the Visigothic monarchy suffered a pronounced decline, due in large part to a decrease in trade and therefore a sharp reduction in monetary circulation, largely as a result of the Muslim occupations in the early 8th century in the south Mediterranean. The Gallaecia were also affected, and Fructuosus of Braga denounced the general cultural decline and loss of the momentum from previous periods, causing some discontent in the Galician high clergy. At the tenth Council of Toledo in 656, Fructuosus was appointed to the Metropolitan seat of Potamio after the renunciation of its previous occupier. At the same time the Will of the Bishop of Dume Recimiro was declared void after he donated the wealth of the diocese convent to the poor.
The crisis at the end of the Visigoth era dates to the reign of Egica. The monarch appointed his son Wittiza as his heir, and despite the fact that the Visigothic monarchy had been traditionally elective rather than hereditary Egica associated Wittiza during his lifetime to the throne (for example, Egica and Wittiza are known to have issued coinage with the confronted effigies of both monarchs). In 701 an outbreak of plague spread westward from Greece to Spain, reaching Toledo, the Visigothic capital, in the same year, and having such impact that the royal family, including Egica and Wittiza, fled. It has been suggested that this provided the occasion for sending Wittiza to rule the Kingdom of the Suevi from Tui, which is recorded as his capital. The possibility has also been raised that the 13th-century chronicler, Lucas of Tuy, when he records that Wittiza relieved the oppression of the Jews (a fact unknown from his reign at Toledo after his father), may in fact refer to his reign at Lucas' hometown of Tui, where an oral tradition may have been preserved of the events of his Galician reign.