The first jews
We have evidence of Jews in the medieval kingdom of Galicia from the earliest moments of Christian repopulation in the Early Middle Ages, first in the countryside and later in the small towns that formed around the year 1000, from the north (Jewish necropolis of A Coruña) to the southern regions of Ourense and Portugal, in the part of the vast kingdom of Galicia, and even in the kingdom of León, with a greater Jewish presence in the 10th-11th centuries, due to the repopulation policy of the Galician secular and ecclesiastical nobility, with the support of the monarchy, which made no distinctions between religions and ethnicities.
Etnologic Museum
Jews in Galicia
The lands of Celanova, between the Miño and Limia rivers, and even beyond, since the properties of the monastery extended as far as Coimbra, are the best peninsular paradigm of rural coexistence of the “three cultures,” Christians, Moors, and Jews, in the Early Middle Ages, which is reflected in the onomastics, as names such as Abraham, Daniel, Isaiah, Moses, Saul, David, Solomon…, as well as Arabic names: Habze, Abdella, Cidi, or Muzalha, abound. It was Muslims, both converted and non-converted, who built the only remaining part of the 10th-century monastery: the Chapel of San Miguel de Celanova, a prominent example of Islamic art in Galicia.
The Jews and Moors of southern Galicia worked mainly in agricultural activities, either as serfs or free men, including the cultivation of wine.
The Jews of early medieval Galicia also engaged in the silk trade, which reached Galicia through the Way of St. James.
