The area now called Galicia was first inhabited by humans during the Middle Paleolithic period, and it takes its name from the Gallaeci, the Celtic peoples living north of the Douro river during the last millennium BC, in a region largely coincidental with that of the Iron Age local Castro culture. Galicia was incorporated into the Roman Empire at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, being turned into a Roman province in the 3rd century AD. In 410, the Germanic Suebi established a kingdom with its capital in Braga (Portugal) which was incorporated into that of the Visigoths in 585. In 711, the Arabs invaded the Iberian Peninsula, taking the Visigoth kingdom, but soon in 740 Galicia was incorporated into the Christian kingdom of Asturias. During the Middle Ages, the kingdom of Galicia was occasionally ruled by its own kings, but most of the time it was leagued to the kingdom of Leon and later to that of Castile, while maintaining its own legal and customary practices and personality. From the 13th century on, the kings of Castile, as kings of Galicia, appointed an Adiantado-mór, whose attributions passed to the Governor and Captain General of the Kingdom of Galiza from the last years of the 15th century. The Governor also presided the Real Audiencia do Reino de Galicia, a royal tribunal and government body. From the 16th century, the representation and voice of the kingdom was held by an assembly of deputies and representatives of the cities of the kingdom, the Cortes or Junta of the Kingdom of Galicia, an institution which was forcibly discontinued in 1833 when the kingdom was divided into four administrative provinces with no legal mutual links. During the 19th and 20th centuries, demand grew for self-government and for the recognition of the personality of Galicia, a demand which led to the frustrated Statute of Autonomy of 1936, and to the Statute of Autonomy of 1981, currently in force.
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Gallaeci, the Celtic peoples