Thousands of men and women had to leave their homeland, both for political and for economical reasons.
The Galician diaspora had several phases:
1st: In the 18th century, thousands of Galicians went abroad as landworkers to Andalusia, Castille and Portugal.
2nd: From 1860 to 1936 a massive emigration to Cuba, Argentina and Brasil took place.
3rd: At the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) all the borders to emigration were closed for some years due to the Franco’s dictatorship. Only exiled people were forced to flee from Spain. In the 1950’s emigration to Argentina and Venezuela started again.
4th: With the boost of the lack of industrial workers, Galician Emigration flowed massively to Central Europe (UK, France, Germany and Switzerland) and to Industrial areas in Spain (Catalonia, Basque Country and Madrid) in the 60’s. This process stops at the beginning of the 70’s.
In the beginnig of the 20th century the Galician Academy was founded in Cuba. But it is not till the arrival of the exiled intellectuals after the Spanish Civil War that the cultural and political activity increases a lot, specially in Mexico and Argentina.
In Argentina the cultural contribuitions were really important thanks to the efforts of intellectuals, politicians and artists such as A. R. Castelao, Luis Seoane or Eduardo Blanco Amor, creators of radio programms in Galician, speech organizers and publishers of magazines and books prohibited by Franco’s regime. In the same way, the poetry work by Rosalía de Castro and Manuel Curros Enríquez was reedited.
Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885) e Manuel Curros Enríquez (1851-1908) made the Galician Poetry reflourish after several centuries of silence. They are an important reference in our culture. In their poems they spoke against the misery and the injustice the Galician population was suffering. This forced many Galician to go abroad in order to earn a life for their families.
