1981 Galician Statute of Autonomy

After the death of Franco, and due to there being no clear successor to his rule, Spain moved quickly to form a democratic government [Share, 1986: 557]. The 1978 Spanish Constitution permitted the development of regionally autonomous communities and permitted through these the devolution of certain powers to those regions that had had a history of self-government and a cultural history separate from Castilian Spain [Constitute, n.d.]. In 1980, a Galician Statute of Autonomy was passed and went into effect the next year [Xunta de Galicia, 2009; D’Emilio, 2015: 915]. Through Article 5 of the Preliminary Title, Spanish and Galician were both established as regional official languages, meaning that the government of Galicia was now able to enact legislation permitting the usage of Galician in all aspects of daily and official life. Organizationally, the Statute of Autonomy bestows onto the Galician government, through Title II, Article 27, the capacity to teach the Galician language alongside Spanish in the educational system [Xunta de Galicia, 2019]. 

Over the next four decades, these provisions were strengthened through additional legislation such as the 1983 Law of Linguistic Normalization, which made language discrimination illegal , established the  Royal Galician Academy as the authoritative body on the language, and strengthened the standing of Galician in daily life and in the public sphere [Parlamento de Galicia, 1983]. Independent private ventures such as Radio Galicia and the Galicia Hoxe newspaper (the latter operating exclusively in Galician) helped to promote its use, , and various local traditions were revived through this renewed enthusiasm for the Galician language [CRTVG, n.d.; Consello da Cultura Galega, n.d.]. However, the 1983 Law of Linguistic Normalization and policies that were put into place in the years following that have since been weakened, and there are many who feel that the government has not done enough to protect the maintenance and growth of the Galician language [Nandi, 2018: 37]. As a result, various groups have coalesced recent years in order to once again come to the defense of Galician.