Galicians are not real Celts

Galicians are not probably not real Celts. But they would like to be.Many, thanks to some sel-interested tinkering with history by nineteenth century Galician Romanics, are fully convinced they are. ?Most of the Celtism found by local historians in Galicia is utter claptrap. It is decoration to cover the gaping holes in that particular story’, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote in 1931. The independent tribes that injabited this area in pre Roman times certainly had, from the sea, contacts with Brittany, Ireland and other Celtic areas. Modern genetics has shown also, that here is a shared gene pool around the European Atlantic in which the people of northern Spain, including the Basques , share. There is even an ancient Gaelic text, the pre-eleventh century Leabhar Gabhala ( The bool of the invasions) which claims that Ireland was once successfully invaded and overturn by Galicians. These were known as the ‘sons of Mil’ and , improbably , took Ireland in a single day.

Whatever the truth of the Celtic origins- and they do not shout out at you in the physical aspects of Galicians or in their language – people like them. Vigo’s football club is, for example, called Celta de Vigo. In front of the Tower of Hercules, the ancient lighthouse overlooking the ocean at La Coruña, a huge, round, modern, mosaic rosa de los vientos, a wind compass, bears the symbols of the world’s Celts – including the Irish, Cornish and Bretons, Bagpipe players are here a common as in Scotland. Some even make it as local pop stars.

From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet