Galician Literature

Galician Literature

Galician-language literature is the literature written in Galician. The earliest works in Galician language are from the early 13th-century trovadorismo tradition. In the Middle Ages, Galego-português (Galician-Portuguese) was a language of culture, poetry (troubadours) and religion throughout not only Galicia and Portugal but also Castile.

After the separation of Portuguese and Galician, Galician was considered provincial and was not widely used for literary or academic purposes. It was with the Rexurdimento ("Rebirth"), in the mid-19th century that Galician was used again in literature, and then in politics.

Much literature by Galician authors is written in Spanish, such as by Ignacio Ramonet, Rafael Dieste and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester - though such writers tend to be excluded from discussion of Galician literature and counted as Spanish-language literature.

Rosalia Castro de Murguía's Cantares Gallegos (1863; Galician Songs) was the first Galician-language book to be published in four centuries. Related to literature, Chano Pineiro's 1989 Sempre Xonxa (Forever a Woman) is regarded as the first Galician-language film. The intellectual group Xeración Nós, a name that alludes to the Irish Sinn Fein ("We Ourselves") promoted Galacian culture in the 1920s. Xeración Galaxia was established to translate modern texts that would link an independent Galician culture with the European context. The Galician translation of the Bible was begun in 1968 by Editorial SEPT and published in 1989.