The National Anthem of Galicia

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The National Anthem of Galicia is Os pinos ("The pine-trees"), and it was composed in 1886 by Maestro Pascual Veiga using the lyrics from a poem by Eduardo Pondal.

What do the murmuring say
in the greenish coast
to the transparent beam
of the placid moonplace?

What do the high
dark pine needle jagged tops say
with its well compased
measured grumble?

"With your girdled greenness
and with benign stars
limit of the green castroes
and courageous land,
don't give to oblivion
of outrage the hard effort;
wake up from your dream
home of Breogán.

"The good and generous
our voice understand,
and with determination they attend
our harsh sound,
but only the ignoramus,
and wounded and hard,
idiot and dark
don't understand us, they do not.

"The times are arrived
of Age Bards,
that your indeterminacies
end they will put down;
because where it wants, giant
our voice proclaims
the redention of the good
Nation of Breogán".

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The whole central idea is very simple: that Galicia wakes up from its dream and embarks on its journey to freedom. The name of Galicia does not appear in any part of the poem, as is customary with Pondal, but is replaced by Nazón de Breogán [Nation of Breogán]. It is asked to wake up from its dream, not to forget the injustices and to listen to the voices of the murmuring pines, which are none other than the Galician people.

Besides Celtism which are always present in Pondal's work, it was ability to affect deeply the feelings of the public and to express his fundamental aspirations, all of which brought him great success.

A Brief History of Os Pinos:

The Galician National Anthem was performed for the first time in 1907 in Havana, and just like the flag and the coat of arms, owes its existence to emigration. In 1908 it was to be made official. In its elaboration Veiga's scores and Pondal's poem Os Pinos were joined together.

From 1907 to 1923 the Galician National Anthem was sung by regionalists and advocates of land reform at their meetings, and little by little became more and more accepted by many more. The centralists were forced to endorse it finally in the Spanish electoral campaign of 1977. During the period previous to the Second Spanish Republic, all Galician National symbols were prohibited. At that time, Galician societies in South America intensified their interest in the public expression of the National Anthem. In the Second Republic the fondness for it grew and grew into the expression of a region within the Integral State that had been established. During Franco's fascist regime (1936-1975), it was prohibited again and only sung at most at cultural gatherings as a song belonging to Galician folklore. Thanks to nationalist illegal party UPG (Galician´s People Union), from 1960 onwards it began to be interpreted in a more explicit way, although its ideological aspects had to be played down.

In 1975, during a nationalist gathering in the Festival of the Apostle, the public began to stand up as the National Anthem was sung in a very heart-moving act. A year later the custom became permanent in the Quintana Square of Santiago even though it was never ratified by the Spanish authorities. The custom is nowadays a nationalist and reivindicative act, usually omitted and censured by Galician official TV, though it uses to gather more than thirty thousand persons in the Square.