Rexurdimento

Its central feature was the revitalization of the Galician language as a vehicle of social and cultural expression after the so-called séculos escuros ("dark centuries") in which the dominance of Castilian Spanish was nearly complete.

This created some degree of diglossia, with Castilian Spanish dominating literary and business use, and Galician being strictly a language of daily life.

The first phase involved a rather diffuse revival of the Galician language; the second is more concentrated, including the first new Galician-language works in centuries to gain acclaim.

This provincialist movement centered at the University of Santiago de Compostela; its most prominent figure was Antolín Faraldo Asorey.

On the literary front were villancicos (intended to be sung), one play (A casamenteira by Antonio Benito Fandiño, published in 1849 and centered on arranged marriage), satirical sonnets, two books of poetry by Nicomedes Pastor Díaz, and various other works.

Professor Dolores Vilavedra, while cautious in drawing conclusions, sees this phase of the Prerrexurdimento as basically a Galician form of artistic and political Romanticism.

The intellectual heirs of this thwarted movement were a group of young people, among them Manuel Murguía, Eduardo Pondal, and Rosalía de Castro.

The Rexurdimento is conventionally considered to begin with the publication of Rosalía de Castro's book of poems Cantares Gallegos in 1863.

Nonetheless, there is no sharp break from the Prerrexurdimento to the Rexurdimento, and there were no other significant publications in Galician for over a decade after the Cantares Gallegos, a period that includes Spain's Glorious Revolution and the subsequent liberal era.

Costumbrismo, the literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs, was also active in Galicia, as it was elsewhere in Spain.