Cantabri

By the 1st century BC they comprised eleven or so tribes—Avarigines, Blendii [es], Camarici or Tamarici, Concani, Coniaci or Conisci, Morecani, Noegi, Orgenomesci, Plentuisii, Salaeni, Vadinienses, and Vellici or Velliques—gathered into a tribal confederacy with the town of Aracillum (Castro de Espina del Gallego, Sierra del Escudo – Cantabria), located at the strategic Besaya river valley, as their capital.

[6] This supports the earlier view that Untermann considered the most plausible, coinciding with archaeological evidence put forward by Ruiz-Gálvez in 1998,[7] that the Celtic settlement of the Iberian Peninsula was made by people who arrived via the Atlantic Ocean in an area between Brittany and the mouth of the River Garonne, finally settling along the Galician and Cantabrian coast.

[11] The earliest references to them are found in the texts of ancient historians such as Livy[12] and Polybius,[13] who mention Cantabrian mercenaries in Carthaginian service in the late 3rd century BC.

This opportunistic policy led the Cantabri to initially side with Quintus Sertorius during the Sertorian Wars,[20] but at the final phase of the conflict they shifted their allegiance to Pompey, continuing to follow the Pompeian cause until the defeat of their generals' Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius at the battle of Ilerda (Lérida) in 49 BC.

[28] Nevertheless, the harsh measures devised by Augustus and implemented by his legate Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to pacify the province in the aftermath of the campaign only contributed to further instability in Cantabria.

[34] Literary and epigraphic evidence confirms that, like their Gallaeci and Astures neighbors, the Cantabri were polytheistic, worshipping a vast and complex pantheon of male and female Indo-European deities in sacred oak or pine woods, mountains, water-courses and small rural sanctuaries.

Druidism does not appear to have been practiced by the Cantabri, though there is enough evidence for the existence of an organized priestly class who performed elaborated rites, which included ritual steam baths, festive dances, oracles, divination, human and animal sacrifices.

The Iberian Peninsula in the 3rd century BC
Location of the Cantabri during the Cantabrian Wars , in relationship to today's Cantabria, along with the tribes that lived there, the neighboring peoples, towns and geographical features, according to classical sources.
The Cantabri territory and their neighbors.
Monument to the Cantabri people in Santander .
Cantabrian stele , carved in sandstone (1.70 m in diameter and 0.32 m thick)