The Galician ancestors of the Gallegos settled in the extreme northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, open to the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay. In the south, the Minho River separates Galicia from Portugal, and in the east, Galicia's neighbor, the mountain Asturias. Unlike other historical regions of Spain, Galicia has a declining population. In the ten years since 1955, it has decreased by 14,781 and amounted to 2619,605 people by 1965.1 A backward agricultural region with a predominant peasant population (4/5 of its inhabitants live in rural areas)2 , a weak bourgeoisie and a small proletariat, 3 Galicia has always claimed to be "quieter" than the industrial national regions of Spain, Basconia and Catalonia.

Even Strabo 4 in the first century AD, describing the northern tribes of the peninsula (Galaics, Asturians, Cantabri, Vascones, etc.), contrasted their backwardness and savagery with the civilization of the Iberians of the south. But even the greatest contemporary Spanish ethnographer, Julio Caro Baroja, 5 still identifies the north of the Iberian Peninsula as a special ethnographic zone. These lands were isolated from the ancient Mediterranean influences (Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians), but more open to Central European ones. It is generally accepted that pre-Romanesque traditions of folk tribal culture are best preserved here. However, within this complex are united multi-lingual peoples: Portuguese, Galicians, Asturians, Basques. Languages divide it into completely independent ethnographic areas. The boundaries of the Galician language are extremely close to those of the historical region of Galicia. Note also that within Galicia there is a single type of peasant stone construction.-

1 S. Alvares. Sobre Galicia. P: 1968, p. 45.

2 Ibid., p. 100.

3 "Annuario e stadistica de Espagna". Madrid. 1969.

4 Strabo. Geografiya, Moscow, 1964, p. 151.

5 J. Caro Baroja. Los Pueblos del Norte de la Peninsula Iberica. Madrid. 1946; ejusd. Los Pueblos de Espagna. Barcelona. 1946.

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houses, rudimentary round buildings "pagliaso", pile barns "orreo", two-wheeled carts like a cart, folk clothing, agricultural implements.

The remnants of the pre-Christian beliefs of Galicia are more analogous to Celtic and Germanic cults than to Iberian ones. In Galician folklore, the strongest traces were left by the lyrics of medieval troubadours. It differs sharply from the Leon-Castilian one, which is dominated by the heroic epic (the result of Galicia's non-participation in the military operations of the Reconquista period). The greatest vitality and originality is currently distinguished in Galicia by musical folk art. Its melodic originality has preserved the traditions of medieval lyrical song in purity.

Many researchers [6] point out their similarity to the songs of Brittany, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining this as common Celtic traditions.

The oldest extant written record mentions the Estrimni tribes [7] in this land. Ancient authors write that in the first half of the first millennium BC. e. 8 Celts penetrated here and stayed here longer than in any other area of Iberia. Apparently, the Galaics, which gave the name of the Roman province "Galicia", were formed from the mixing of various Celtic tribes with the local Estrimni 9 . The Romans conquered the country of the Galaiki a century later (I century AD) than the south and center of the peninsula. Romanization was slow and sluggish here. However, the Gallegians finally began to speak the vernacular Latin; by the fifth century, when the Germans moved to the peninsula, the Gallegians were already a Romanized people. The Suevi Kingdom (417-585) was the first independent state on their land. The Suevians brought the Germanic language here, which left traces in modern Galician in the form of lexical and toponymic borrowings (for example, the names of settlements-Suegos, Suebos, etc.). It was during the Suevian period that the basis of the modern Galician language with a Romance substratum was formed. 10 And in 585. The Suevian kingdom was absorbed by the Visigothic power, which then occupied almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. In the eighth century, when Spain was conquered by the Arabs, many Visigothic knights and clergy fled to Galicia, but they did not contribute much to the Galician ethnic group proper, remaining an isolated aristocratic stratum.

The Arabs didn't stay long either. True, in 716, they captured Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto, Braga, Ourense and Lugo, but in 718, bypassing Galicia, the battle of Covadonga opened the Reconquista. The north of the country became the focus of Christian resistance to the Moors for several centuries. The Reconquista marked the beginning of the ambivalence of the Galician state consciousness, which is still largely inherent in them today. On the one hand, it was then that Galicia began to be defined as an independent state, and the Galicians as a special ethnic community; on the other, this kingdom, which was striving for isolation, was constantly drawn into general Spanish affairs. The line of demarcation in the ancient tribal borders was especially marked when Portugal was separated from Galicia in the 12th century into an independent possession. The state border along the Minho River became a language border by the 14th century. But the ethnography of Portugal and Galicia still has a lot in common. At a time when the entire peninsula was occupied by constant wars, and the north was relatively calm, the role of the Galician language increased enormously. "Galician-Portuguese poetry had such an attractive power in the eyes of all Spain that in Castile the lyrics were born as a foreign plant," wrote the famous philologist Menendez Pidal. "Throughout the thirteenth century, whether it was Senor Camerosa Diaz, or Senor Don Lopez Diaz de Haro of Biscay, or later King Alfonso X and his contemporaries Pero Garcia of Burgos, or Pero Amedo of Seville, they all wrote lyrical poems in Galician." 11
But Galicia became the center of all-Spanish attraction at that time for a different reason. Here was the main shrine-

6 E. Lopez Cuevillas. La civilisacion celtica en Galicia. Santiago. 1953; V. Risco. Historia de Galicia. Vigo. 1952.

7 See Vestnik drevnoi istorii, 1939, No. 2, p. 228.

8 "Fontes Hispaniae Antiquae". T. II. Barcelona. 1952, pp. 54 - 63, 76, 91 - 93.

9 E. Lopez Cuevillas. Op. cit., p. 91.

10 E. Gonzales Lopez. Grandeza y decadencia del Reino de Galicia. Buenos Aires. 1957, p. 39.

11 R. Menendez Pidal. Selected works, Moscow, 1961, p. 421.

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The nya of the entire Spanish-Christian world is the church of the" holy patron " of Spain, Iago, in Sant'ago de Compostela. Here, to the magnificent Romanesque cathedral, built over several centuries, crowds of pilgrims flocked. From here came the ideological impulses that inspired the crusades against Muslims. In the heyday of Sant Jago, Galicia could have been at the head of a state union of all Spaniards. But this did not happen, because not the Galicians, but the Castilian chivalry took on the main role in the Reconquista, and the lands conquered from the Arabs were settled by the serf-free peasants of Castile, Leon and Asturias. In Galicia, at the same time, the process of attaching peasants to the land was intensifying, as they began to flee en masse to the conquered territories of Castile and Leon. It was then, in the X-XIII centuries, that the system of semi-feudal "foro" holdings (preserved until the middle of the XX century) began to take shape in Galicia, which had a huge impact on the structure of land use and predetermined many features of the national character of the Galicians. It was a system of rents that gave certain privileges to the peasantry at one time, but was not comparable to the freedom of land use among the Castilian farmers. At the same time, such an important feature of the long-term lease "foro" was determined, as an equal division of land between heirs, without the right to buy and sell it. This then gave rise to an extreme fragmentation of land parcels, which grew into the modern "problem of minifundism" 12 . The difference in the socio-economic organization of the two kingdoms then affected their uneven development, which made it possible for the political subordination of Galicia to Castile.

When the Catholic kings Ferdinand and Isabella succeeded in uniting Castile and Aragon in 1479, Galician independence ended. In 1480, the royal troops moved against the recalcitrant Galician lords. 46 castles were demolished, 13 rebellious feudal lords were executed or expelled, and the population was taxed. At the head of the "Audiencia of the Kingdom of Galicia" was the viceroy of the Spanish court. The Castilian language from that time begins to attack Galician, gradually reducing it to the level of the spoken language of the village. The old "gallego" was used in official documents, according to academician V. F. Shishmarev, only until the beginning of the XVII century .14 The new owners of the land-Castilian aristocrats-squandered the rent "foro" at the Madrid court. Capital was flowing away, and no one invested it in the business. The first commercial and industrial enterprises were founded here by Catalan businessmen. Therefore, the economic crisis of the 17th century, which hit all of Spain after the "golden inflation", hit Galicia especially hard. Landowners found a way out in raising rents. Then the traditional departure of Galicians from their land in search of work began: first, seasonal otkhodnichestvo for harvesting in Castile, Andalusia, Extremadura, and then abroad.

Already in the XVII century. Portugal has received more than 30 thousand migrants from Galicia. In the 18th century, the exodus increased 15 .

By the 19th century, more than half of the land in Galicia had become the property of the "dead hand". The form in which desamortization was carried out in the 1860s (allowing church and community lands for sale) did not solve the agrarian problem in general. Land hunger and the lack of employment of workers drove the peasants to the liberated American colonies. Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay took sailboat after sailboat with ragged, stocky peasants who spoke little Spanish. It was then that the type of comic "gallego" appeared in the folklore of Castile and America - uncouth, stingy, distorting words, allegedly always ready for a treacherous act. Paradoxically, the misfortunes of these outcasts, who roamed the world in search of bread, caused not pity, but ridicule, and even gave rise in Spain and America to a whole series of sayings about their vitality and cunning. Meanwhile, the nineteenth century has shown that this people contains enormous vital potentials. The war with Napoleon's troops, the Guerilla War, and the revolution of 1808-1812 were a time of unprecedented recovery for Galicia after centuries of hibernation and complete subjugation.-

12 S. Alvarez. Origen y formacion de la nacionalidad gallega. "Nuestras Ideas". Bruselas. 1964, N 12.

13 Altamira y Crevea river. Istoriya Espanyi [History of Spain], Vol. 1, Moscow, 1951, p. 419.

14 V. Shishmarev. Essays on the history of Spanish languages, Moscow, l. 1941, p. 70.

15 J. Ruiz Almanza. La poblacion de Galicia (1500 - 1945) segun los documentos. Madrid. 1948, pp. 305 - 308.

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instructions to the central government. When the second bourgeois Revolution began in Spain in 1820, Galicia was granted regional autonomy for the first time and enjoyed it until the defeat of the revolution in 1823. As in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Brittany, and Provence, a cultural Revival movement began in Galicia. Romantics and Republicans, who called themselves "heralds", led in the 1840s at the University of Sant Jago de Compostela the work of Revival based on the traditions of Galician culture.

The bourgeois revolutions that followed each other gave rise to maximalist hopes, which were then replaced by disappointment in the possibilities of solving problems "from Madrid" and increasing confidence in their own, local path. The struggle for autonomy and economic reforms was combined by the "heralds" with intense creative work in the field of literature, history, folklore, linguistics, music, theater, and theory of the nation. According to the literary critic Juan Varela, he was "a political and cultural centaur who is not allowed to live in slavery and a dependent life." 16 In fact, it is precisely what was done then that feeds the national culture of Galicia to this day. The poetry of Rosalia de Castro, Eduardo Pondal, Enriquez Curros, the historical works and novels of Manuel Murgia and Benito Visetto, the theoretical works of Antolin Faraldo and Alfredo Branhas - these are Galician classics. A lot has been done indeed. The Galician Library series alone contained 52 volumes, and the number of periodicals published in Galicia increased to 54 in 1887.

The political ideas of the regionalists of that time were most strongly expressed by the poet A. Branias: "Regionalism sees its political ideal not in creating a region-state, but in making the region part of a whole with a certain autonomy within a single or integrated homeland," he wrote. "Regionalism presupposes a certain region limited by certain, not so much geographical or political, as ethnographic borders, which allows, on the one hand, not to mix with the other peoples of the nation, and on the other - not to separate from them in a radical way."17 A. Branhas called the whole of Spain and Galicia a "nation". His Galicia is a nation within another nation: a characteristic dualism of national identity, typical of representatives of many peoples interspersed in multinational states. In times of persecution, this dualism easily gave way to a pronounced nationalism. And in those days the historian B. Visetto wrote: "To unite diversity in unity; to be Spanish without ceasing to be Galician; to strengthen our relations with all civilized nations and, by assimilating the best that they have, to preserve always our Galician identity!" 18 . In 1897, the famous poet Rosalia de Castro explained: "In these poems - not hatred, but grief. Castile represents centralization here. The hatred is not for Castile, but for centralization. " 19
These ideals found their organizational embodiment at the beginning of the 20th century, when the first local national parties were created: "El Nasionalismo", which fought for the solution of political and cultural problems, and" Solidaridad Gallega " (agrarians), which dealt with economic issues. The movement for autonomy was particularly strong after the founding of the Organization of Galician Republicans-Autonomists (ORGA)in 192920 . When the Republic was proclaimed in Spain, many Galician organizations offered their assistance to the new government, including Partida Gallegista, which hoped to meet its demands through republican legislation. The Seminario Estudios Gallegos drafted the statute of autonomy of Galicia, which was approved by a plebiscite on December 19, 1936, by 76% of the region's population21 . Om was presented in the Cortes on July 15, 1936, but did not have time to receive approval. On July 18, the fascist revolt began. Galicia was one of the first areas captured by the Francoists. Already in July, 50 thousand Republicans were shot there. Among them, one of the first is the author of the mentioned statute, Molo-

16 J. Luis Varela. Poesia y Restauracion cultural de Galicia en el siglo XIX. Madrid. 1958, p. 292.

17 A. Branas. El regionalismo. Barcelona. 1889, pp. 41, 58.

18 B. Vicetto. Historia de Galicia. T. VII. El Ferrol. 1871, pp. 519 - 520.

19 "El regionalismo y los Juegos Florales". Barcelona. 1897, p. 21; S. Alvares. Op. cit., p. 33.

20 S. Alvares. Op. cit., p. 33.

21 Ibid., p. 40.

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dpi scientist Alejandro Boveda 22 . Over the next thirty years, the government's efforts were aimed at silencing the autonomist tendencies, subordinating the economy of this area to the interests of the center, and discriminating against those cultural achievements that were the pride of Galicia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Emigration continued. Galicia among all the regions of Spain was firmly in the lead in terms of the number of departures. In the period 1951-1959, an average of more than 25,000 people left annually .23 The internal " ebb " was now absorbed not in the agricultural south, but in the industrial centers of Catalonia, Biscay and Madrid. Across the Americas, from Canada to Patagonia, Galician "colonies" exist independently of other expatriates from Spain. They organize (since the 19th century) the so-called "Galician Centers", or mutual aid societies, whose economic and social influence is very great. Investments of Galician communities account for a significant share in the economy of Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. The centers help new arrivals find shelter and work, provide medical care, organize Galician schools, publishing houses, and direct artistic and artistic activities. The Galician Center in Havana, founded in 1879, had 55,000 members and a capital of 6 million pesos before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In 1968, there were 100,000 members of the Galician Center in Buenos Aires .24 For the development of Galician culture in these communities, conditions were often much more favorable than in their homeland. It is enough to point out at least the free use of the native language, Galician schools, numerous publications of Galician authors, exhibitions of national artists, and the study of the history, folklore, and ethnography of Galicia. Emigration is a whole "culture within a culture" that belongs equally to Galicia and the country that gave shelter to its creators. The emigrants were poets and writers E. Curros, A. R. Castelao, Seoane Diaz Pardo and many other people of art and science.

At home, under the Francoist regime, the development of Galician culture faces enormous difficulties. The local intelligentsia is particularly concerned about the fate of the Galician language. Despite the efforts of Renaissance enthusiasts, by the twentieth century Galicia had become a bilingual country, with the Castilian language playing an ever-increasing role in its life. "Gallego" continues to be the colloquial language of the peasantry. Galician is spoken with a very peculiar phonetics by people engaged in marine fisheries, and part of the urban proletariat. The native language is known and used "when necessary" by the rural and urban bourgeoisie. But the Galician language has finally disappeared from the lives of" business people", government agencies, mass communication, education, art and religion (in the cities of Galicia, they now speak mainly Castilian). And in the suburbs there is a special dialect of it, "kastrapo". The use of Castilian is often dictated not only by the interests of the case, but also by certain socio-psychological complexes. A peasant who does not know Castilian feels degraded and inferior in the city; it is difficult for him to find work; he is driven from everywhere. Castilian for him is a means to become "like everyone else"in the city. At the same time, a significant part of Galician high society is deliberately moving away from the "Plebeians" by not using the rude and ridiculous "gallego". On the contrary, another part of Galicians try to speak Castilian badly. There is a special patriotic chic in the distortion of Spanish words. It is like the opposition of the intelligentsia, who actually speak the purest "Castellano": this is the environment that supports the traditions of the literary Galician language, reads and writes in it.

The University of Sant Jago de Compostela has a department of Galician language and literature, but it is more like a department of a foreign language than a native language. They are more engaged in philological research and folklore studies than in teaching students. As a result, local literature becomes the property of a handful of sophisticated writers and professors. Inspired by the idea of continuing folk traditions in literature, they consciously ignore the popular bilingualism that has become a reality, and write in a language developed in laboratory conditions. They are called in Galicia "emigrists", that is, "purist patriots". The gap between narodny and litera-

22 Ibid., p. 42.

23 A. Miguez. Galicia, exodo y desarrollo. Madrid. 1967, p. 113.

24 См. "Primero Congreso da Emigration galega. (Documentation. Cronicas)". Buenos Aires. 1956.

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foreign languages are common. But in Galicia, it reached extraordinary proportions. It is said that during the period of propaganda of the "Galician Statute", one speaker delivered a speech in Galician to the peasants of the province of Lugo. When he spoke, a peasant asked another: "What language does he speak?"25 . And not surprisingly. After all, education, even in a village where everyone speaks Galician, is conducted in Castilian. Even after 1965, when it was allowed to worship in the native language, in Galicia, even in the most remote villages, it is held in Castilian. Radio Gallega has only one program in Galician (The Voice of Vigo). There are about two dozen publishing houses in the region, of which only three publish books in Galician ("Editorial Galaxia", "Celta" and "Adro").

The question of preserving the Galician identity as a whole does not rest solely on the preservation of the language. Both pessimists and optimists understand that only in Galician in the region they will no longer write or speak. It is more about how to preserve the tradition of the literary native language without breaking it with the actual use of the language in the popular environment. Almost ingrained bilingualism is no longer considered by Galician cultural and political figures only as evil. After all, knowledge of Castilian introduces the population of the region to the life of the country as a whole. And this is necessary at least in order to feel equal among other Spaniards. The question is about the equal use of languages. After all, both local and expatriate Galician newspapers and magazines are also bilingual, which fully reflects the picture of dualism in the Galician consciousness. Antonio Migues, a young graduate of the University of Compostela who dedicated his first book in 1967 to the problems of Galician culture, believes that the question of belonging to Galician culture "is not decided by the author's nationality or the language in which he wrote. Many authors who were born in exile are part of the Galician culture. Other Galicians in exile represent Castilian, that is, pan-Hispanic, culture. Murgia, for example, always wrote in Castilian, but he did a great deal for the spiritual life of Galicia... I think that Valle Iclan is a Galician writer, and Pardo Bazan is also a Galician writer, but to a lesser extent. On the contrary, Garcia Lorca, although he wrote beautiful poems in Galician, certainly does not belong to Galicia. " 26
Galicians understand that the resolution of their local problems is inseparable from the fate of Spain as a whole. The events of the last decade show that the anti-Franco movement has also spread to this part of the country. The region's working class, concentrated mainly in the major ports of El Ferrole, Vigo and La Coruña, emerged after a long hiatus during the trade union elections of 1960 and 1963. Here, as throughout Spain, so-called workers ' commissions were created from below in opposition to the government's "vertical" trade unions, and at their meetings programs were developed that included demands for the legalization of the right to work, strikes, free trade unions, etc. In 1966, the workers ' struggle resulted in open demonstrations against the dismissal of 1 thousand workers. The man from the El Ferrol businesses 27 . In January 1968, student unrest in Galicia reached its climax28 . The students demanded the transformation of the University of Sant'ago de Compostele into an autonomous "University of Galicia", the organization of free student trade unions, and a radical reform of the entire archaic system of higher education. The strike lasted a whole month. Several times students took part in street demonstrations, and they were supported by the youth workers ' commissions.

The Galician student unrest was closely linked to the Spanish youth revolt. However, in Galicia itself, the appropriate spiritual atmosphere has also matured for these performances. It began with the fact that about twenty years ago, a group of Galician intellectuals began to seek the restoration of the statue of the poet Henriques Curros, destroyed by the Nazis in 1936. Since then, the movement of Galician intellectuals for the democratic and cultural development of their homeland has not stopped. In 1962, a large exhibition of books in the Galician language was organized in Lugo under the title "One Hundred Years of Galician Literature", and since 1963, May 17 is celebrated annually as Galician Literature Day. The Francoist authorities had to

25 A. Miguez. Op. cit., p. 133.

26 Ibid., p. 148.

27 "Nova Galicia". P. 1970, 1 trimestre, N 14/15, p. 22.

28 S. Alvares. Op. cit., p. 131.

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to put up with honoring the memory of the prominent Republican poet Antonio Machado in several cities of the region. Galician cultural figures protested in the press against the authorities ' persecution of peasants from Branhas de Gratigneira and in defense of the striking Asturian miners. In the fight against government repression, some Galician bar associations are particularly prominent in opposing fascist methods in jurisprudence .29
Under a totalitarian regime, the struggle of Galicians to democratize their homeland is extremely difficult. But the events of recent years in Spain show that it is not hopeless.

29 Ibid., p. 129 etc.

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