Justin Hawkins

Galicia, the northwestern province of Spain, is home to the third holiest city in Christendom. After Rome and Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela has profound religious significance as a vibrant center of religious piety due to its long and unique religious history reaching back almost two millennia. The earliest manifestation of Galicia’s religious history was a widely-believed folk mythology, the echoes of which are still noticeable in the daily religious life in the region. Nowhere else in Spain is the syncretic mix of antiquated folk mythology and traditional Orthodox Christianity so strong as in Galicia.

In a country as religiously homogenous as Spain where 94% of the population self-report as Catholic, religious minorities are not be able to survive without adapting certain characteristics of exclusion and cohesion that would not be necessary in a country with more equally-distributed religious diversity. The smaller numbers of believers and widespread opposition from other religions presents a situation which entrenches community loyalty and cements cohesion in that community. Consequently, it is possible to speak generally of the minority religion in terms of a monolithic unit because diversity of opinion and factionalism rarely exist within a community that is faced with such staunch opposition from without.