The Exiles

The exile of Galicians is in keeping with the dynamics and specificities of a region with considerable experience of geographical mobility that gave rise to important organizations of emigrants in Latin America. For this reason, Galician exiles were less likely than people from the rest of Spain to remain in Europe.

That America was the destination of part of the “intellectual exile” as well as being the heart of Galician nationalism in exile, with figures like Alfonso Daniel Manuel Rodríguez Castelao, Luis Seoane, Lois Tobío and Florencio Delgado Gurriarán, also fostered more studies of the people who went there.

In the photo we see Francisco Fernández del Riego, from Lugo and his wife Evelina Hervella on their first visit to Buenos Aires in 1954. One of the founders of the Galaxia publishing house (1950), co-director – with Ramón Piñeiro of Grial magazine - and a member of the Nös group, the Seminar of Galician Studies and the Galicianist Party,   Fernández del Riego was one of the most outstanding figures of 20th-century Galicia. In the centre are Virxinia Pereira, Castelao’s widow, along with fellow exiles Ramón Suárez Picallo y Antón Alonso Ríos, founder of the Montevideo-based Council of Galicia, of which Castelao was president until 1950 when Alonso Rípos succeeded him. Also in the photo are Manuel Puente, one of the creators of the Chamber of Republican Merchants, María Elvira Fernández López, known as Maruxa Seoane for being married to Luis Seoane, who took part in most Galician cultural initiatives in exile, such as the Forms Laboratory, the Citania publishing house, the “Emigrant Galicia” radio program, and Sargadelos.

Exiles were prominent features in 20th century Galician politics as well, but since many of them could not return to Spain until the restoration of democracy, which made it difficult to incorporate them into the narrative of the Transition, their memory was much more inconvenient in the political realm than the cultural. 

AGF