Posts tagged Galicia

They say there is nothing worse than a homesick Celt a long way from home or a bunch of Celts on a mission if they feel that culture is under threat.

I can talk about those issues above with a degree of the impunity being a fully paid up “Celt” myself being half welsh and half Scottish.

The problem most Celtic cultures and countries have is essentially one of a constant dilution off cultural identity down to the years. By this I mean that effectively the Celtic tribes moved from Central Europe westwards either voluntarily or were driven west by other tribes moving into Central Europe from their homelands further east.

This process of migration took place over several thousand years B.C. and in the time since any Celtic cultures or societies in existence have either been wiped out or severely depleted by later migrations into their territories.

Nowhere is this struggle for potential cultural identity more evident possibly than in Galicia in north-western Spain. There are several organizations in existence in Galicia who believe that their history and the Celtic influences in that history has actually been neglected for too long and been overshadowed by later developments from a Castilian / Spanish perspective.

Now this article is not a treatise or an attempt to try to cause potential revolution or secession rather it is an attempt to try and shed some light on what otherwise would be viewed as potential cultural paranoia.

Over the post 40 or 50 years various Galician Academics have tried to reconstruct their past and transform it such that it could potentially form the basis off a Galician nation.

The problem with all this is that yes logically there is plenty of evidence that there is a very strong connection between the communities and the ethnic cultures in Galicia and other Celtic nations such as Ireland. The trouble is that only in Ireland have they effectively and successfully preserved their ancient manuscripts and other various scholarly materials which effectively have stood them in good stead when trying to reach a consensus in any form of cultural identity.

In Ireland to be brutally blunt they were lucky in that whilst the rest of Europe was effectively thrown into cultural darkness during the dark ages. In Ireland the monastic heritage was such that in Ireland it kept alive the flame of culture and facilitated the reintroduction of many Christian beliefs and practices when elsewhere in Europe these had effectively been driven underground.

Else where, especially in mainland Europe they were not so lucky and therein lies the problem that many Celtic scholars who are based in the European Celtic Communities and territories face. The evidence of manuscripts and well-known antiquities are not so openly available if they exist at all and this can lead to overdependence on a history and culture based mythology and legend and not based on fact.

There is no doubting the racial and cultural affinity between the various Celtic communities in Europe of Galicia, The Basque Territories and Brittany with the Celtic Communities of the British Isles and Republic of Ireland, that much is a given.

It is more of a case in the responsible representation of that cultural identity within the greater National boundaries that these Communities find themselves within and how they reconcile any potential difficulties that they inherit.

It is a testament to the security and belief in their cultural heritage in Galicia that they have managed to achieve such a credible balance between the separate Celtic and Galician culture and identities and that from within the greater community that is modern-day Spain so well.