Province of Lugo

Lugo is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northeastern part of the autonomous community of Galicia. It is bordered by the provinces of Ourense, Pontevedra, and A Coruña, the principality of Asturias, the State of León, and in the north by the Cantabrian Sea (Bay of Biscay).

The population is 331,327 (2018), of whom a quarter live in the capital Lugo. The capital city was an ancient Celtic settlement named in honour of the god Lugh (see Lyon), later Latinised as Lucus Augusti, and which became one of the three main important Galician-Roman centres alongside Braccara Augusta and Asturica Augusta (modern Braga and Astorga respectively). The province has 67 municipalities.

Languages
The vast majority of people have a common language, Galician. Some people, especially the older generation, are monolingual in Galician. There are only a few people bilingual in Galician and Castilian: just over 10,000 inhabitants. Even in the capital, the vitality of Galician in conversation is very strong.

The inhabitants speak several variants of Galician in the province of Lugo. They have the characteristics of being the closest to León isoglosses and therefore also Castilian. That makes them they some grammatical and phonetic signs that are mistakenly considered influences of Castilian or of Leonese. However, the Galician spoken in Lugo, especially in non-coastal areas, is probably the most conservative in Galicia because almost no historic pressure from Castilian has existed on the rural population.

Population
The historical population is given in the following chart:

Estuaries
The estuaries of the Lugo province are part of the Atlas estuaries. From west to east they are:
 * O Barqueiro estuary
 * Viveiro estuary
 * Foz estuary
 * Ribadeo estuary

Rivers

 * Miño river
 * Sil river
 * Landro river
 * Ouro river
 * Masmo river