Gallaecia

The Romans named the northwest part of Hispania or the Iberian Peninsula Gallaecia after the Celtic tribes of the area the Gallaeci or Gallaecians.

[1] The Gallaic make their entry into written history in the first-century epic Punica of Silius Italicus on the First Punic War: Fibrarum et pennae divinarumque sagacem flammarum misit dives Callaecia pubem, barbara nunc patriis ululantem carmina linguis, nunc pedis alterno percussa verbere terra, ad numerum resonas gaudentem plaudere caetras.

344–347) "Rich Gallaecia sent its youths, wise in the knowledge of divination by the entrails of beasts, by feathers and flames—who, now crying out the barbarian song of their native tongue, now alternately stamping the ground in their rhythmic dances until the ground rang, and accompanying the playing with sonorous caetrae" (a caetra was a small type of shield used in the region).

This campaign was largely a punitive one, in the context of the aftermath of the Lusitanian wars, as the capital of the Callaici (Portus Cale) was only definitively occupied by Marcus Perpena in 74 BC.

On the night of 31 December 406 AD, several Germanic barbarian tribes, the Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, swept over the Roman frontier on the Rhine.

The emirs, preferring to focus on the task of consolidation of conquered territory, ultimately never expanded into these highly defended mountains, which the Romans before them also had taken generations to incorporate.