By José Manuel Nunes
When anyone talks about Celtic Galicia, this person is challenging one of the establishment`s worst taboos whenever there are more authors from many nationalities who recognize our Celtic identity. It's acknowledged that the heartland of people who we used to call Celtic is located here. The powers seem to favor a metropolitan, Spanish nationalist and endogamous staff at the Santiago`s University intending to provide consistent historical reasons in order to preserve this cultural and political artifice called Spain.
Why do we speak of Celtic culture or civilization but not of Galician Celtic inheritance? Beatriz Díaz Santana (* mar shampla), says that currently these theories enjoy little academic acceptance and that their theories are considered a nonsensical and scientifically fantastic tale. Are they intending to isolate the people of Galicia, reduce it to a mere Spanish region dependent on the autonomous capital where a colonial puppet government is trying to dispossess the people of their heritage and historic roots? Remember that this is what is done with the language using the ILG-RAG orthographic rules.
In this sense, they are seeking to enforce a Galician perverted and deprived minor language, cut off from Portuguese language only because the latter is the same language used as an official worldwide language in Portuguese-speaking countries. However, the publications of those "Politically correct” academic nabobs, entitled by the metropolitan powers, speak now on Atlantic culture and even recognizes finally influences from the Celtic peoples.
Nevertheless, the opinion of researchers who also passed through the islands and former Armorica goes far: Galicia is the primitive homeland of the Celtic peoples. This is one of the basic foundations of the Paleolithic continuity theory supported among others, by internationally renowned researchers like Mario Alinei, and Francesco Benozzo Bryan Sykes`s researches based on linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidences shows us that the Gallaecian lands were the birthplace of proto-Celtic civilization in the compact that formed the British islands linked to the continent during the Paleolithic.
Thus it is that the megalithic monuments were one of the first manifestations of a cultural series of shared cultural patterns among people that would be called Celts in the course of time and where the oldest, after the Armoricans ones only , are Galician.
There seems to be a realistic evidence attesting that our Galician lands were like a cultural outpouring that originated the following waves of progressive celtization. The main epicenter of that new civilization was what the Romans named Gallaecia. Many academic researchers would be, even recklessly, unconvinced about the outcome of their archaeological and linguistic research, but the combination of both elements enhanced by genetics does not seem to leave room for suspicion as to which Galicia is the original homeland of Celtic civilization. It is what sustains the prestigious English geneticist Bryan Sykes to say that the Celts reached the British Isles were from Galicia and even when it is not an Leabhar Ghabhála valid historical source, but a mythological legacy, the coincidence is striking.
We are tired of attend to many conferences, seminars and university classes where euphemisms are compulsory in order to hold a post. Françoise Le Roux and Christian J Guyonvarc'h . had come to sustain the same viewpoint as us in their acclaimed work "Celtic society" as it is cut short from the old methods ,ignoring purposely the context of the old society itself. Proponents of anti-Celtic theories also tend to obsess with getting data with the sole desire to know unimportant facts, but not really to understand the main definitory features of these cultures they lack definitely for an satisfactory method providing multidisciplinary analysis. They seem confined to the unsurprising archaeological work and the interpretation of some sterile linguistic and anthropological findings.
You cannot expect even to have the slightest clue of how ancient societies work ignoring their ideology and beliefs, even if you know well their material remains. The material and spiritual sides of that social framework need to be explained jointly.
The traditional communities are indivisible, and so far, a correct analysis is irreducible to a single topic or matter of knowledge. The old society is the product of religious thought, and this is not arbitrary.
That is to say, it is conceivable the existence and reliability of researchers who study the Galician autochthonous Celtic gods and goddesses from the pantheon of Latin?
Only a single example would be sufficient,the idol of Aquis Querquenis discovered in Bande Lower Lima region Ourense near to the imposed border with Portugal. It is a Roman ancient military camp, but the custom is known to recruit indigenous as the auxiliary troops that would give them Roman citizenship after 25 years of service. So that is the reason they joined Roman legions, although they kept their traditional Galician beliefs and their deities.
In the figure, the helmet and clothes appear as clearly Celtic, one can appreciate it fully. The legend told us that Bandua took at breast, the same string used by Cuchulain to tie wounded warriors to a tree so that they could die with dignity: see the statue of the Baile Atha Cliath Post Office building.
On the other hand, can also be significant local place names called Bande, but those people responsible for the archaeological study of the area labeled with the name of Mars, a Roman supremacist prejudice , realizing that the Celts did not edify or conceive temples to the deities in the form of object-Maybe they refuse to examine closely the possible relation with place names and Indian mythology. It is also possible that they were seduced by the idea of presenting to the world our cultural manifestos with the eyes of Roman and not with the natives ones.
Last but not least, we must think about why the isolationists speak on hill forts civilization . That is what makes you talk of Celtic and not Celtic? What is the another component that prevents genuine nomenclature? Is not the fact that the former Galician be a scattered population where each castro is politically autonomous, because that it is something we could say of all Celts ,they are "fortified" of course. The atomization is not only an exclusive characteristic of Galician Celts.
If it is true the fact that they share language, religion, art ..,we could be able to speak of a distinctive commonwealth of ancient Celtic nations, but at this time there was no consciousness or more patriotism than the own family, kinship and village. That is why we are not facing something so unique that split Gallaecians from the rest of Celtic peoples.
On the other hand, it is certain that the greater was the distance the greater specialization took place. Then, we can speak of deities or some other characteristic of a "fort", which happens in any Celtic land, but it is clear that the presence of the interceltic pantheon is also present in Gallaecia , witnessed by uncountable and repeated placenames. When they are bringing to the present this captivating world as something without Galician roots particularly the northwest peninsula that has been influenced as much of the Celtic peoples their proposals reveal only pure iintellectual demagogy made in Spain because little or none of the asserted by us formerly is ignored or refused by thee international scientific community, beyond Spanish boundaries.
1. Díaz Santana, Beatriz. “Os celta en Galicia: arqueoloxía e política a creación da identidade galega” Noia (A Crunha). Editorial Toxos Soutos Serie Keltia. 2002.
2. Le Roux, Françoise; Guyonvarc'h. “A sociedade celta” Portugal. Publicações Europa-América.1991.
3. Balboa Salgado, António. “A Galicia celta: a relixión” Santiago (Galiza). 2002.
4. Conde, María. “Una teoría de investigadores italianos sitúa en Galicia la cuna del mundo celta”. La Voz de Galicia. Sábado 21 de outubro de 2006. Sociedade, página 29.
Links
1 Topónimos Celtas em Portugal http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top%C3%B3nimos_celtas_em_Portugal
2. Instituto Galego de Estudos Célticos http://www.estudosceltas.org/?q=gz/node/45
3. The Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm http://www.continuitas.org/textsauthor.html
