History
In pre-Roman times the region was populated by the Astures, a Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian people. They were conquered by Emperor Augustus in the Astur-Cantabrian Wars (29–19 BC) and the area quickly became the largest mining center of the Empire during the Roman period, where gold and other metals and minerals were extracted. Numerous Roman mining sites are still visible in the area, one of the most spectacular being Las Médulas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. Romans also imported grapevines, and wine production thrived in the region until the propagation of Phylloxera at the end of the 19th century, which destroyed the majority of the vineyards.
Historically part of the Kingdom of León, and briefly a province of its own within the larger Leonese region from 1821 to 1823, with the new administrative division of Spain in 1833 the majority of the region was integrated in the province of León, with the Valdeorras municipalities becoming part of Galicia.
El Bierzo developed its own peculiarities as Galician and Leonese traditions mixed under Castilian influence, and thus was granted the administrative status of comarca. Spanish is the official language, but local dialects of Galician and Leonese are also spoken in the westernmost areas and are present in some village toponyms. In the 12th century there was a colony of immigrants from Poitou in the Bierzo.
The status of El Bierzo as a shire is recognized by law, and it is the only one officially recognized in the autonomous community of Castile and León.
Read more about this topic: El Bierzo
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)