ABSTRACT
This chapter incorporates the most recent research and interpretative studies into a coherent explanation of the origins of Galicia as a social and political reality and the momentous role the miraculous finding of the relics of the saint apostle, Inventio Sancti Iacobi. Galicia took shape as a clearly defined polity in the framework of the reconfiguration of Northern Christian Spain during the eighth and ninth centuries. Eighth-century Galicia was a Romanized country, provided that we understand Romanization as a process of acculturation, of cultural and social miscegenation. The Asturian kings were in need of Galicia to construct a coherent political entity in order to attract the Christian populations of Spain resistant to Muslim domination and to stand against the powerful emirate of Cordoba. Galicia was the most densely populated region of northwestern Iberia, comparatively the best developed and the most slightly affected by the outcome of the Muslim invasion.
